Chuck vs MI6
by sharpasamarble
Summary: Chuck is set to the side as Sarah is paired with a charming MI6 agent. What could happen / could have happened in the MI6 story arc.
1. An Absence of Hope

_This is a take on what could happen in the upcoming story arc where an MI6 agent catches Sarah's eye. My goal is to write a streamlined little piece (at least for me) and to"play nice" with the TV series. In other words, this won't be a fluff fanfic where Chuck and Sarah live happily ever after in the end. That doesn't mean there won't be any Charah; just that it will be limited to what I would consider to be realistic for the show._

_The show will use two episodes in the MI6 arc. I will pretty much break the storyline into two distinct parts, but the show plans to weave in enough Buy More plots and Devon/Ellie to fill two hours of TV time. I'm not going to worry much about the side plots, because I really want to finish this quickly, given the approach of the episodes._

_I'll need to add a couple of caveats._

_I've made limited use of spoilers (pretty much just the episode descriptions), so I'll have to make a best guess. It may not end up fitting all that well, but hopefully it will stand up on its own merits._

_I made a stab at the first episode in the arc (Chuck vs the Beefcake), but I'm pretty much ignoring the actual plot of the second episode (Chuck vs the Lethal Weapon). I read the description and just was uninspired to write that particular episode. I am, however, interested in exploring what Chuck and Sarah might go through, so I'm substituting my own second episode._

_One last thing: originally, Chuck vs the Suburbs was supposed to come before Chuck vs the Beefcake, but NBC rearranged the episodes. This one is designed to come after Chuck vs the Suburbs._

_Enjoy!_

* * *

Chuck let out an enormous but quiet yawn as he emerged from his bedroom. He scratched his stomach through his dark-blue-and-red flannel pajamas as he wandered through the apartment into the kitchen.

"Morning, Chuckster!" Devon greeted him energetically.

Chuck gave a Casey-like grunt in response. He had been up much of the night, his mind ping-ponging between the perfect morning he and Sarah had spent in the suburbs and the way Sarah had declined his suggestion that they house-sit for another day or two. Seeing how things could be and then having it cruelly snatched away … it was just unfair.

So was needing to brush by Captain Awesome in his skin-tight T-shirt and even tighter biker shorts to get into the kitchen. The man's skin glistened in the afterglow of his morning ride. If Chuck could have found the energy, he would have shuddered.

"Good morning," Ellie said, breezing in from her room. She wore a downy blue robe carelessly open in the front, revealing her own white T-shirt and a pair of casual pajama pants.

He pulled down a box of cereal and went searching for a bowl. The awakened portion of his mind grumpily reflected on the overabundance of cheer in the room. Chuck could only muster enough strength to grunt a greeting when his sister kissed him on the temple as the two passed each other.

Having gathered everything he needed, he went and sat at the breakfast table. He was about to pour his cereal when noises from the kitchen distracted him.

Devon and Ellie were flirting in the kitchen, making cute little small talk as they went about their morning routine. The way they so comfortably went about things reminded him of his morning with Sarah and brought a lump to his throat.

Chuck didn't realize he was staring until his sister glanced over, sensing his eyes. He guiltily went back to his cereal.

Ellie whispered something to Devon, her eyes focused on her brother. Devon nodded, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and grabbed the tall glass with his morning smoothie on his way back to their room.

She came over and sat down next to Chuck. "Sarah?" she asked rhetorically.

Chuck didn't have a good answer at the ready. He found himself in the same situation for the umpteenth time, needing to defend the status quo of his relationship for the sake of the cover. Still, this particular morning it was difficult to find the passion to defend things. "Seeing you and Devon together is tough sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I am so happy for you two and I'm ecstatic that he makes you so happy. It's just, given where things are between Sarah and me..."

Ellie just nodded understandingly.

He stirred his cereal with his spoon, giving him an excuse to look away. "I just don't think that Sarah and I will ever have that kind of happiness."

She searched his face with her eyes. "Chuck, you told me that you and Sarah are never going to be more than you are right now."

"That's right."

"If you really feel that way, you need to think about breaking up with her."

"Ellie, I can't–"

"I know it's hard, Chuck. It's hard when you're in a place where you really like someone but you still know, in your heart, that it just isn't going to work. It's better for both of you if you go ahead and accept reality."

Reality. Chuck nearly laughed. Little in his life these days was based on reality, least of all his relationship with Sarah.

Ellie reached across and grabbed his hand. "The longer you two stay in a relationship that isn't going to work, the more you delude yourselves. You deserve better than that. So does Sarah."

The real problem with what Ellie was saying was that it made so much sense.

* * *

Chuck walked into the Orange Orange. Sarah looked up from some paperwork, her face instinctively lighting up in a smile before she realized something was wrong.

She knew what was coming; she could read it in his face. She knew what he would say before he opened his mouth. Still, she had to sit there and listen to it all. She had to listen to every last painful word – and, worst of all, she had to pretend that it was all OK.

Without preamble, he said, "I can't do this any more Sarah. You might be able to keep a cover relationship separate from a real one, but I can't. I keep falling into the same trap where I start to believe that maybe, somehow it's possible we can find a way have something."

She couldn't say anything. She didn't dare.

He continued, "I could tell you that I need this to end for the sake of the assignment, so that we could work together better, and on some level that's true. Still, I won't lie to you – I need the relationship to go away so the hope can go away with it. It hurts too much to hope for a future we'll never have."

Chuck wore the same expression that he had worn when she asked him for the fake wedding ring back. The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow. Deliberately keeping her face tight, she said as little as possible. "OK, Chuck. If that's what you want."

"It isn't what I want. It's just the only option left."

The mild comment stung like a lash. It was as close to accusatory as Chuck ever was. She managed to keep her face neutral. "Do me a favor and don't say anything to anyone yet. If Casey finds out, he'll tell Beckman, and I need some time to figure out a way to sell Beckman on a new cover."

Emotions danced across his face as he nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Did he sense how much this hurt her as well? Part of her hoped not. Part of her hoped he did.

The urge to speak left him. With a solemn nod of thanks, he turned and left the shop. The cheap bell on the door tinkled tinnily as the door slammed shut.

Her face screwed up in pain. Chuck was wrong. It hurt far more not to have any hope of a future at all.


	2. Mata Hari

Sarah decided that reading briefing books wasn't a way for anyone to spend a Friday afternoon.

She sat alone in the Castle, surrounded by the glow of monitors and the humming of electronic equipment. Ostensibly, she was supposed to be going over intelligence bulletins. In reality, her eyes kept flipping up to the various surveillance monitors, and one monitor in particular.

Not one hundred yards from where she sat, Chuck was working his day job at the Buy More. He was an island of calm in a sea of chaos; wherever he went in the store, things suddenly started getting done. It took a series of cameras and hours of study to appreciate what kind of effect Chuck had on his co-workers, and unfortunately, Sarah had had both at her disposal.

She laughed as Chuck sent some green shirt scurrying to the back with a single suggestion and a smile. She couldn't blame the teen-ager; that same smile made it so hard for her to remain detached enough to do her job properly. She had almost caved on a number of occasions under the gentle weight of that smile. Deep inside her, bittersweet melancholy clotted and threatened to transform her smile to tears.

She jerked her eyes away from the monitor, a bit irritated with herself. It didn't help anything to watch Chuck like that, she reminded herself. It was an impossible situation; she had known that all along. Still, Chuck wasn't the only one who had allowed himself to hope, and the loss of that hope hurt more than she ever thought it could.

Sarah let out a determined sigh and went back to her memos. For nearly a full thirty seconds, she managed to stay focused. However, recent incursions in the Korean demilitarized zone weren't enough to keep her attention away from the monitor for long.

"You know, it probably is important for me to check up on things at the Buy More once in a while." She knew she was lying to herself. She didn't care. If she couldn't be with him, at least she could remind herself of what her sacrifice was protecting.

Picking up a remote control, she activated the microphone associated with the camera watching Chuck at the Nerd Herd desk.

* * *

"Who is she?" Morgan asked.

Chuck glanced up from his clipboard. A young woman with bleached hair and a trim figure was combing through the relatively weak selection of import CDs carried by the Buy More.

"She works at the pub at the other end of the mall," Jeff said. "She's got the cutest little accent."

"She single?" Lester asked. He slurred his words the slightest bit; his jaw was a bit slack with lust.

Jeff nodded. "Man, I'd like to give her bangers some mash."

Chuck said, "I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but I'm pretty sure that I'm disgusted."

"I'm going to ask her out," Lester said, determination ringing through his voice.

"What?!" Morgan asked. "Please. You don't have a prayer."

"If the British taste in men is anything like the British taste in food, even Bartowski would have a shot. These people think blood pudding is a delicacy."

"C'mon, you really want to compare your dating situation to Chuck's?"

Chuck had been idly listening as he worked through the day's Nerd Herd orders until that comment was made. A sardonic, self-pitying little laugh escaped his lips before he could stop it.

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to face Chuck, their eyes alight with curiosity. He looked up, trying to think quickly. "I mean … really, guys, don't try to compare your dating lives to mine. I hit the jackpot. It's just not fair." He really didn't sound very convincing. If he had hit the jackpot, he sounded like a man who had misplaced the ticket.

Lester's eyes narrowed. "I have to say that we haven't seen as much of Miss Sarah around lately. Are you sure there isn't a little trouble in paradise?"

Chuck's pause probably lasted a bit too long, but Morgan came to the rescue. "I know this is a stretch, but imagine if you had a girlfriend. Now, if you were going to hang out with said girlfriend, would you do it in the middle of the harsh lights and open spaces of the Buy More? Or would you whisk said girlfriend off to an intimate, poorly trafficked yogurt shop with your choice of two dozen delectable toppings that you could slather all over her milky, creamy…"

"Morgan!" Chuck nearly shouted.

"What? I was going to say 'pan-Asian style yogurt'. C'mon, a beautiful woman and all the free yogurt you could want? You can't beat that."

Chuck was rarely so glad to hear his cell phone ring. With a nervously frustrated expression, he held up a finger and walked away from the group. "Hello?"

"We've got a mission," Casey said in his usual terse manner. "Briefing in five minutes."

* * *

Sarah forced a businesslike expression onto her face as she heard the vault door activate. As Casey and Chuck came down the stairs, Sarah hit a few buttons on the console, and the wide view of the Buy More on the main screen was replaced with a larger-than-life image of General Beckman.

"You have an assignment for us, General?"

"A new man, Simon Lynch, was recently assigned to the office of the Consul-General at the British Embassy in Los Angeles." A digitized file folder with statistics and details of the man's history appeared on the monitor. A picture of a handsome man with striking green eyes floated from the folder and expanded on the screen. "Lynch has worked for the embassy network for a number of years, but our intelligence indicates that he has been using his position to obtain British government secrets and sell them to the highest bidder."

"So what's the mission?" Casey asked.

"The Carmichaels will approach Mr. Lynch at his hotel, pretending to be buyers of information."

"Great. Another night spent working as a busboy," he grumbled.

"What was that?" the general asked, not pleased with his tone.

"Nothing, general." Regrouping, Casey's face grew sly. "Actually, I was just thinking – it seems like Lynch would be planning to lie low for a bit at a new position. Any new leaks would be matched to his arrival. Also, it seems like an unnecessary risk to put Bartowski in the field for this. There should be little to trigger a flash."

"You make good points. Do you have a suggestion?"

He gave a sidelong glance at Sarah. "I think this situation calls for a good old-fashioned Mata Hari."

Sarah shot Casey a sidelong glance, the slightest bit of nervousness on her face. Chuck looked around questioningly. "What's a 'Mata Hari'?"

Casey gladly supplied the answer. "A seduction for the purpose of gaining information."

Chuck's face went white. It was impossible not to notice.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Bartowski?" the general asked.

"I just don't … like sitting on the bench, ma'am."

"Your enthusiasm is noted, but Casey is correct: there is no need to risk you or Casey in the field for this mission." She turned to more generally address the group. "Mr. Lynch is staying at the Hilton downtown until he can find an apartment. Agent Walker, you will approach Simon Lynch at his hotel and seduce him. After he's bit more … pliable, see what you can learn."

Sarah gave a nod of acknowledgement.

"Agent Casey, Chuck, you will go on-site to provide surveillance and support. Pay close attention to every word that Lynch says. Report back to me with what you learn." The general signed off.

Chuck looked at his teammates; his face couldn't hide his nervous outrage. "Seduction? Really?"

"Any means, Bartowski," Casey said, clearly enjoying Chuck's reaction. Sarah didn't seem to be enjoying it quite as much.

"So how does this work?" Chuck asked the two. "You approach a target, introduce yourself, nuzzle at their neck and then ask, 'Oh, by the way, do you steal government secrets and post them on eBay?'"

"This will probably go beyond the heavy petting you aren't having on the dates you aren't getting."

Chuck's eyes narrowed. "It strikes me that this is all pretty easy for you to say, given that you'll be waiting in the car."

Casey straightened proudly. "I'll have you know I've performed four different seductions for my country, and each time, let's just say the mission wasn't the only thing that completed successfully."

"And thank you for burning that particular image into my brain." Chuck looked over at Sarah almost accusingly. "I can't believe that you'd go along with this."

She put on her best professional façade. "Seduction is a time-honored spy technique. It's very effective when executed correctly."

The tacit admission that Sarah had performed seductions before was more than Chuck could take, and his face showed it. His gaze was a mixture of anguish and disillusioned disappointment.

He shared a long look with Sarah; both looked like they wanted to say something. Neither did. Neither could, for all sorts of reasons.

Uncomfortable with the silence, Chuck muttered, "Let me know what I need to do." He fled towards the stairs to the Orange Orange.

Casey grunted, conveying a world of pleasure at Bartowski's discomfort. After Chuck was out of earshot, Casey turned to her and asked, "Now, you're sure you're gonna be able to do this with Bartowski watching?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she shrugged. "I've seduced men before."

"Look me in the eye and tell me this won't be any different."

Putting on her best poker face, she replied, "This won't be any different." She caught a glimpse of Chuck plaintively looking back at her as he reached the top of the steps, disappointment and something more in his eyes. Her poker face suddenly cracked.

Casey looked at her for a moment, peeked at Chuck over his shoulder, and then chuckled. "Oh, this is gonna be fun." With a smirk on his face, he headed over to the computer bank to start preparing for the mission.

Sarah quietly sighed. Maybe this mission would be a good thing given the "break-up". She could focus on a mission that didn't involve Chuck, and when Chuck saw this different side of her, that might allow him to start getting over her.

At least then, she'd be the only one miserable.


	3. Simon Lynch

Sarah walked across the lobby of the Los Angeles Hilton. She was glad that the mission was finally ready to begin, glad to be back in a world that she understood. More than anything, she was glad for the excuse to put Chuck out of her mind.

She entered the bar, simply named the Lobby Lounge, and surveyed the room. This hotel lounge was like so many others. A long bar with dark wood and brass rails gave lonely travelers a place to sit without feeling self-conscious, while the dim lighting hid the flaws of weathered furniture and patrons alike. A standard piano ballad played by a graying gentleman in a tuxedo muffled the edges of the various conversations.

She spotted Simon sitting alone in a booth meant for four towards a corner of the room. A waitress in a high-cut dress stood chatting with the man, clearly enthralled. Sarah noted this; it took more than a little charm to cut through the defenses of a cocktail waitress.

Strolling across the room, she ignored the occasional lustful stares from businessmen and conventioneers; they were to be expected given her outfit.

Dressing for seduction was a bit of an art, but one that Sarah had mastered long ago. The trick was to make it look like you weren't trying too hard while selecting an outfit that fit both the occasion and the purpose. In Sarah's case, this meant a professional length black skirt with a pretty armless red blouse that highlighted her cleavage. It was exactly the type of outfit that would be packed by a confident businesswoman eager to mix pleasure with business at the end of a long day.

She boldly crossed the room and walked to Simon's table. He wore a crisp white shirt underneath a dark sports coat with a stylish European cut. His smile was coy, calm and confident.

The waitress, intentionally or not, shielded the table from approach with her body. "Excuse me," Sarah said to the woman.

Sarah received an irritated glance from the waitress. Reluctantly, the server made way. She was in it deep.

"May I join you?" Sarah asked Simon.

He directed a reassuring smile at the waitress before turning it on Sarah. The smile was insidious in its effectiveness; it was friendly, it was comforting, and it was the slightest bit dangerous. His cheeks had that perfect level of scruff that some men seemed able to maintain without even thinking about it. Still, it was the eyes, striking in the file photo but downright piercing in person, that had even a seasoned agent like Sarah Walker taken slightly aback.

"Certainly," he said with the slightest English accent. "Miss…"

"Jones. Jeannie Jones." Jeannie Jones was a name she had borrowed from a woman attending one of the conventions in the hotel. It never hurt to be thorough.

"Please sit, Miss Jones. May I buy you a drink?"

"That would be nice. I'll have … a Vodka Collins please," she said to the waitress.

"Certainly," the woman responded. She directed a pair of very different glances at the two before leaving.

"I hope I wasn't interrupting anything," Sarah said, an obvious reference to the look the waitress had given her.

"Just a little idle chitchat to pass the time." He took a moment to assess her. "A Vodka Collins. You don't see too many of those ordered these days."

"I like it. It's a classic drink."

"Some would call them old-fashioned."

"Nothing wrong with being old-fashioned … at least when it comes to some things."

Sarah could tell a lot about a man by the way he responded to the first allusion to sex in a conversation. Over the years, depending on the mark, she'd had men who would snap at the bait immediately, some who would choke on their drinks, or even some who would miss the allusion altogether. Simon, however, had the perfect response. His smile grew a little as he looked her in the eye, acknowledging her hint while expressing just the right amount of curiosity. This man was no stranger to flirting and, if the pace of her heartbeat was any indication, he was very good at it.

He held her eyes for a long moment before gently breaking his spell. "So, are you in town for a convention?"

She smiled. "How did you guess?"

"There's not much reason for a woman like you to be in a hotel bar, alone on a Friday night."

"A woman like me?" she asked, genuinely curious.

He took a sip of his drink, a clear fizzy concoction with a lime floating in it, his eyes traversing her figure. Somehow, he managed to do it in a way that wasn't sleazy; his eyes seemed to cherish, almost caress her figure. "Well, your skirt is Evan Picone and your shoes are Fiorentino, which says practical businesswoman spending her day on her feet. However, your blouse is Catherine Malandrino, which says both style and fun."

"You know your clothes," Sarah said, impressed.

"Still, I find you can learn the most about a woman by her hands." He reached out and took her near hand, turning it over with one hand so he could rub his other palm across hers.

Sarah didn't have to feign a reaction; her protest died on her lips as he gently but firmly stroked her skin. The way his hand moved felt as intimate as any kiss.

"A fair bit of roughness. I'm surprised," he said, scanning her palm as if reading her fortune. He frowned. "And a callous here and here. Do you sword fight?"

"I fence," she lied, gently pulling her hand away. "I grew up in the Hamptons, and it was practically as popular as football in high school. I'm surprised you could pick that up, though. I hardly get to do it any more."

He pulled his hand away and pointed at his palm with his other. "Same calluses. Cambridge graduate. I still manage to work in the occasional bout. We'll have to fence some time."

"That's funny," she said, "I thought we already were." The two locked eyes; this time, she was the one casting the spell with her eyes and her smile.

Sarah was determined to take back the upper hand. While it seemed that it would be easy enough to end up in Simon's bed, it wouldn't do her any good in her current mindset. She was a little too taken by Simon's charms.

The waitress arrived with Sarah's drink and another dirty look. Sarah pretended not to notice as she picked up the stirrer, giving her a moment to plan her next advance.

* * *

Chuck agonizingly watched and listened over the surveillance equipment in the windowless van. Casey had tapped into the hotel security system, so they were able to watch the action over a camera in the hotel bar.

Coupled with the microphone concealed within the folds of her blouse, Chuck had a fairly full picture of what was going on, despite some interference distorting the audio feed. Either Sarah was truly enjoying herself with the charming Brit, or she was an expert at making it look like she did.

Neither one boded well for Chuck's emotional state. While he had only broken off a fake relationship off with Sarah, it still hurt to watch her in this situation, especially knowing the ultimate goal. It would have hurt enough just to be around her, but now he was being forced to watch Sarah climb back in the saddle.

He desperately hoped that was all he would need to watch her climb on.

"Tell me again why I'm here?" he complained. "Whined" might have been a more accurate description.

"Lynch might say something that makes you flash. We're going to have to watch every last detail. The drinks, the flirting … the hotel room." Casey was clearly enjoying every minute of this. "He might even have some markings on his skin. Be sure to watch particularly closely when they get back to the hotel room."

The last comments seemed to have their desired effect, as once again Chuck's face turned white, tinged with more than a little green.

* * *

Simon and Sarah talked well over an hour. At times, he was able to cast a spell with clever words or his easy manner, and Sarah found herself far too susceptible to his smile. At other times, she had him under a spell of her own; he seemed pleasantly surprised to find his match in the art of flirting.

Verbally, they sparred, probing and riposting, parrying and thrusting. It became a game, one that was growing increasingly intoxicating, no doubt aided by the two additional sets of drinks. The bartender made their drinks strong, and even with her remarkable tolerance, Sarah could feel the alcohol going to her head.

"Two more, please," Simon signaled to the waitress.

"No more for me, thanks," Sarah said. "Any more, and I'll be in bed before 9:30."

"And what's wrong with that?" he asked teasingly.

She looked directly at him. "Nothing at all. As long as I'm not asleep … or alone."

Again, they held each other's eyes for a long moment. Simon finally looked back to the waitress. "I think I'll just take the check."

* * *

"And now the fun begins," Casey said.

Chuck's stomach turned. Sarah and Simon were standing; she was devouring him with her eyes as he set the check on the table and reached into his pocket.

The NSA agent was enjoying himself far too much. He went over to the console of monitors. "Let's zoom in, shall we? I wouldn't want you to miss any of this."

Casey graphically highlighted a rectangle on the screen and punched a few buttons on the console. Suddenly the image was enhanced, but he had overdone it. The image expanded too far, until all that was really visible were the headless torsos of Sarah and Simon. He was pulling a few bills out of his money clip to pay for the drinks. She leaned against the table; the angle of the camera provided an almost pornographic view of her cleavage.

"Casey, Casey, grab a screen shot of that!"

"I am not taking a picture of Agent's Walker's bust for you."

"Not that, the money clip!" Something about the clip seemed familiar. "Capture the image and enhance it."

"Anything not to watch Walker in action, eh, Bartowski?"

"Would you just do it?!"

Muttering under his breath, Casey obliged. A magnified view appeared; the silver clip was inset with a small bronze circlet decorated with a curious interlocking of circles.

Chuck's eyelids grew heavy.

_An old-time Coca-cola billboard._

_An image of the clip. _

_Training videos on the various uses of the clip._

_The circlet was a bug that could be detached; its transmissions would be received by the cap of a rich looking gold pen._

_On the opposite side, a similar circlet would pop out, allowing the wielder to expose a length of garrote wire between the circlet and the clip. _

_A homing device was mounted inside the rounded end of the clip._

_An image of the Clock Tower in London._

_An image of MI6 headquarters. _

_An old-time Coca-cola billboard._

Chuck shook out of the trance. "He's MI6."

"What?!"

"Simon is MI6. Sarah's trying to seduce an MI6 agent."

"He might kill her if he's seen through her cover."

They looked back to the screen. Sarah and Simon had already left the bar.


	4. Team Cole

As soon as the door to her room closed, she threw a switch inside herself. She was alone with a potentially dangerous stranger. From now on, it needed to be all business.

Slowly, she walked up to him, stopping a few inches away. Her body was charged from the liquor and the flirting, and having him in close proximity proved a test to her self-control.

With a deep inhalation, she closed the distance between them and pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were soft and welcoming, as if groomed to deliver the perfect kiss. She fought to follow her agent training.

She put her hands on his chest inside his jacket, trying to ignore the firm tone they found there. She slid her palms around his sides to his back under his coat, an old trick used to search for hidden weapons. All they found were the back of his shirt and toned, cabled muscles. A small involuntary sound escaped her throat.

Pushing with her hands, she removed his coat, swinging his arms back and breaking the contact between their lips. When she turned to toss the coat onto the chair, his mouth returned, but nibbled at her neck.

Thought abandoned her.

Before she knew it, her blouse and skirt were expertly removed from her body by deft hands. Again she proved his match, peeling his crisp shirt from his largely hairless torso without breaking contact. He swept her to the bed; she found herself kneeling while kissing him again. He tasted of chocolate and cinnamon, probably the remnants of whatever dessert he'd had with dinner.

Even in her impassioned state, alarm bells went off. He didn't taste of any alcohol, only the faintest hint of club soda and lime.

That was an agent's trick.

Just as she was trying to figure out what to do, the door to her room burst open. Instinctively, she rolled to her right while Simon rolled to his left.

As Sarah rolled off the bed, she grabbed a sheath she had planted between the box spring and the mattress. As she completed another half-roll on the floor, out came a thin but wicked-looking knife. She wound up to throw.

At the last second, she pulled her toss to one side. The knife buried in the door, quivering a few inches to the right of Casey's head.

"Sorry," he said with a sardonic grin. "You forgot to put out the 'Do Not Disturb' sign."

Simon had a gun pointed at the NSA agent. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously.

"Turns out that we're all on the same side," Casey said. Looking at Sarah lying on the ground in her underwear, he added, "Put yourselves back together. General Beckman wants him back at the Castle in twenty."

At the invoking of Beckman's name, Simon clearly relaxed. Casey removed the knife out of the door, tossed it flat-side down on the comforter, and pulled the door shut behind him as he left.

Simon walked over to Sarah, gun swinging casually to one side. He politely offered a hand and a name. "Cole Barker, MI6."

"Sarah Walker, CIA." She took his hand and let him help her to her feet.

* * *

Sarah and the strikingly handsome man entered the Castle through the vault door in the Orange Orange. They stopped at the landing at the top of the steps so the man could survey the room, his hands on the railing. Sarah joined him so she could quietly explain some thing or other to him. He looked around the room, his eyes resting on Casey for a moment before turning to take in Chuck.

The direct glance allowed Chuck to get his first truly good look at the man.

_An image of a gull flying above a choppy sea._

_A dossier on the man. Barnard Castle School. Excelled in marks, rugby and fencing. Scholarship to Cambridge. Graduated with a Double First Class Honours Degree in engineering. Recruited by MI6 out of Cambridge._

_An image of the man standing in front of a fighter jet, giving a confident grin and a thumbs-up._

_A picture of the man in a tux, surreptitiously scanning a crowd of well-dressed personages._

_A picture of the man in the field, dressed in desert camouflage with full face paint._

_More "Mission Complete" reports than Chuck cared to count._

_The image of the gull over the water._

So this is Cole Barker, Chuck thought.

He couldn't help but notice that Sarah seemed strangely deferential to the British agent. Where her movements were usually efficient and purposeful, now her body language was slightly hesitant and uncertain.

After Cole finished his survey and asked a question, he and Sarah shared an awkward moment when both tried to insist the other went first. No, Chuck corrected himself, it was only awkward on Sarah's side. British cordiality won out, and Sarah walked down the steps ahead of the man, idly using her fingers to push some stray blonde hairs behind her ear as she went.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Casey finally looked up from unpacking from the night's mission. His face registered his misgivings about having another agent in the Castle clearly enough.

Sarah escorted Barker across the floor. "Agent John Casey, meet Agent Cole Barker."

Cole offered his hand to Casey. "Agent John Casey. Your exploits in the Panang Delta are legendary. The mission report is required reading for every second-year at the Academy, as are the details of your work with the insurgency in Afghanistan in the late 80's."

Casey gave a tight grin as he shook the man's hand. "Oh, I'm going to like you."

Cole's eyes turned to Chuck. "And this is?"

"Agent Charles Carmichael," Sarah supplied. "He's an analyst on our team, and my cover boyfriend."

Chuck glanced at Sarah. She had emphasized the word 'cover' the slightest bit. "Hi," Chuck said with a grin that felt a bit too big and a bit too forced.

The agent's hand engulfed Chuck's as he gave a perfect handshake. "Well, Agent Carmichael is just brilliant."

Chuck showed his surprise at the unexpected compliment.

Turning to Sarah, Cole continued, "I mean, really, his cover is spot-on. A job at a chain store, the cheap clothes, and his hair is just classic. If you ever had to sneak out on a mission, it would be perfectly believable that you're cheating. Who wouldn't?" He shrugged. "Nice work, Carmichael."

Casey stifled a chortle, drawing a sharp look from Chuck. His smile became even more forced. "Thanks. I try." He suddenly felt very shabby in his Buy More best.

"If we're through exchanging pleasantries," General Beckman said from the large monitor overlooking the room, "there is work to be done."

Cole turned his twinkling eyes to the screen. "General Beckman, I presume. Agent Cole Barker, MI6. Madame Secretary suggested, should the opportunity present itself, that I convey the appreciation of the British government for your recent efforts in Angola. The FNLA has been a thorn in our sides for a long time, and your actions should take some of the wind out of their sails."

"As usual, the British government is irritatingly well-informed about our activities."

"One does one's best, ma'am."

"Indeed." Chuck was gratified to see that Beckman did not seem to hold Agent Barker in the same regard as his teammates did. "We were a bit surprised to find MI6 in Los Angeles without our knowledge, Agent Barker. May I ask why somebody at your level was assigned to the embassy?"

"I was tasked with finding a leak. Somebody has been passing out government secrets like they were pieces of toffee. Simon Lynch was a cover persona created to try to attract the attention of whoever might be passing out the secrets."

"The 'attracting attention' part seemed to work just fine," Casey noted wryly.

The general said, "I contacted my counterpart at MI6, and he made a formal request for assistance. He asked me if we had any agents who could act in support of your efforts. Given that your secrets tend to be our secrets, it seems that we have a vested interest in your success."

"Thank you, general."

"Don't thank me yet. If we figured out you're MI6, others might have as well. You may end up being nothing more than bait."

"All in a day's work, ma'am."

"You and Sarah will attend a party at the embassy tomorrow night. Every embassy employee should be there; your mission is to determine who is responsible for the leaks."

"Affirmative, general," Walker said.

"Agent Casey will work with embassy security to tap into their surveillance system. You will keep radio contact with the team and provide support by scanning the feeds from the cameras."

The general looked like she was ready to sign off. "And me, general?" Chuck asked, eager not to be left out.

Beckman's face looked as though she had just been reminded of an unpleasant detail. "Agent Carmichael, you will maintain surveillance from the Castle."

Chuck was aghast. "But I could do a better job if I were on site."

"You'll have just as good a view from the Castle, and you can use the video systems and our databases to help analyze anything suspicious that Agent Casey spots." Turning her focus to the team, she said, "Let's see if we can get this one right." She signed off.

Chuck stared at the floor. Was he being benched? He hadn't messed up that he could remember, at least not in the past two weeks.

"Apparently the general finally realized that things tend to end badly when you wait in the car," Casey said as he walked past, managing to include a surprising amount of spite into his quite voice.

Chuck was stunned. Instinctively, he turned to look for Sarah, but she was already heading for the stairs. Only Agent Barker seemed to understand Chuck's disappointment. He walked over and said, "Cheer up, old man. We all have to sit on the bench at times." After placing a reassuring hand on Chuck's shoulder, Cole turned to follow Sarah.

Chuck seriously doubted that Barker ever sat on the bench in his life. Still, to have Sarah ignore him while Barker came over … that just made it hurt all the more.

He stared helplessly after her as she left. She gave him only the briefest of glances as she escorted Barker up the stairs and out of the Castle.


	5. Getting the Blues at Orange Orange

_Still haven't watched either MI6 episode, but I have heard some cries of anguish and gnashing of teeth from various fans. Guess I'll keep going._

_I've finally got three more chapters about done, so I should be posting with a bit more regularity, at least in the short term..._

-o-

Chuck dodged the cheap plastic furniture and the bright tangerine-colored planters as he navigated towards the entrance to the Orange Orange. Glancing through the windows, he was relieved to find that the inside of the store was as vacant as the sidewalk along the storefront, save for Sarah guarding the steely gray counter.

He opened the door and headed inside. The bell gave a cheery little ring. "Hey," Chuck said as he walked up to her.

"Hey," Sarah said, only briefly glancing up from the mission profile on the British embassy. Looking distracted, she added, "I haven't had a chance to talk to Beckman about what we're going to do about our cover."

"That's not why I'm here."

"Then what is it?"

His face crinkled in confusion at her cool manner. "What is up with everyone? Did I do the spy equivalent of drowning kittens or something?"

That comment was enough to finally draw her attention away from her notes. "What do you mean?"

"Everyone is treating me like I've done something wrong. Beckman benched me, Casey has gone from merely annoying to downright mean, and now you're treating me like – I don't know, like I've done something wrong."

She gave an impatient little sigh and went back to her notes, flipping over a page. "I'm treating you like a teammate, one who is interrupting my mission prep."

Chuck's eyes narrowed in disbelief. "If I did something to somehow offend you, I'll be happy to fix it, but first I'll need you to work with me a little and tell me what I did."

"I'm sorry if you're feeling ignored, Chuck, but we have work to do."

"'We'? I seem to have a decided lack of work, except, I guess, for holding down a chair in the Castle with my body weight. You know, on the off-chance it decides to float away."

Frustration began to mix with the impatience in her voice. "You can't have a thin skin in the agent business. Some days you don't have much of a role, and Casey and I don't have the time to hold your hand every step of the way." She picked up a pencil and jotted a note in the margin of the top page.

Again, he found himself staring at her through narrowed eyes as she ignored him. The wrongful hurt in his voice ratcheted up a notch. "I'm not asking for anyone to hold my hand here. I'm trying to figure out why my teammates are treating me like a Mr. Spock impersonator at a Star Wars convention."

Sarah spiked the pencil off the folder; the writing implement found a corner of the counter in which to hide. "You obviously won't leave until you get some advice, so here it is: follow your orders, observe from the Castle tonight, and maybe the Intersect will flash on something useful. Just let us do our jobs."

She went back to her notes, scanning line after line with an index finger.

Chuck couldn't believe his ears. If there had been one constant between him and Sarah since the beginning, it had been her support of him, her willingness to help him understand what was happening. Instead, here she was, treating him the same way as everyone else. He felt like his legs had been chopped out from under him.

He started grasping for possible explanations; there had to be one. Sarah didn't just act like this out of the blue. "Is this about the break-up?"

He thought he heard her breath catch; he definitely saw her stiffen the slightest bit. "Why in the world would it be about the break-up?" she asked.

The tone of her response seemed just a little too uncaring, and she refused to meet his eyes. That had to be it. As unlikely as it seemed, that had to be it.

Chuck said, "The way I see it, the job always comes first for you. You've made that painfully clear every step of the way. The status of our cover relationship is the only thing that's changed besides your attitude, and since it's you who keeps insisting that we can never be more than teammates, all I can figure is that you're worried Beckman will take your inability to maintain a cover with me as a strike against you in your performance assessment. And now you're taking that out on me."

At the last, her eyes shot up. She almost seemed hurt. Almost. "Do you really think I'm that petty?" she asked quietly.

"No, Sarah, I don't. But I also didn't think you'd ever treat me this way, not in a million years. I realize that on some levels things were always difficult between us, but throughout it all, I always thought we were at least good friends. I guess I was wrong about that." He shook his head. "Now I have to wonder what else I was wrong about."

He looked at her through new eyes. A stranger stood in front of him, one bothered more with how she was perceived by her superiors than with how much she was hurting him.

Chuck could see that, even after he laid everything on the table, she still wasn't going to respond. At the moment, that was pretty much the only thing he knew about Sarah Walker with any certainty.

"Fine, you know what?!" He pulled himself back from the brink. Lashing out at her wasn't going to do any good. "Forget it," he mumbled softly. "Good luck tonight. Be careful."

He turned away too quickly to see the first real emotion come to Sarah's face. She watched him walk away, her sadness evident.

The sadness couldn't linger; Casey opened the door just as Chuck tried to use it. The NSA agent held the door open but didn't get fully out of the way. The two men did an awkward little dance as each moved the same direction to try to make way for the other, and then back as both tried to pass through the doorway. Both men showed a level of frustration as they tried to negotiate past the other; Chuck finally managed to escape past the scowling NSA agent.

As Casey entered the shop, he watched Chuck through the store windows as he departed. Casey's irritation faded into a mostly indifferent curiosity. "What's eating him?"

"Don't know," Sarah said, trying to look interested in her notes once more. "Guess he doesn't like being benched."

"I would've thought you'd straighten him out on that."

"He needs to figure things out on his own for a change."

Casey just stared at Sarah for a moment. "Wow. I guess when you move on, you move on."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"C'mon, you weren't exactly subtle about your attraction to Barker last night. It's pretty clear he gets your engine double-0-revvin'."

"He does not."

"Please, Walker, I haven't seen a girl that nervous around a boy since my 8th grade school dance. It makes sense, really. It was only a matter of time before you decided to trade up."

"Is there a point to this, Casey?"

"Absolutely. I'm here to make sure that your predilection to fall for your partners won't cause problems tonight."

"When are you going to let up on the Bryce incident? That was over a year ago. I've admitted it was a mistake, I've learned from it; why can't you let it go?"

"Because you've been romantically entangled with three of your last four partners; I'm the lone exception."

"Oh, so you're here because you're jealous. Just to be clear, Casey – I'm not interested."

He scoffed. "I am concerned because this time your extracurricular activities are affecting three members of the mission team. It's affecting Bartowski, it's affecting Barker, and it's affecting you. I don't want to be the one left picking up all the pieces because you three can't keep your head in the game."

"Cole and I are professional enough to handle things. As for Chuck, I happen to agree with you: we've grown too close."

Casey made a show of cleaning out one ear. "You're going to have to repeat that last part; I could have sworn that you said you agreed with me about you and Bartowski."

Her eyes went to the side as she started to explain. "You were right, Casey. Chuck and I have grown too close. Cole is a perfect excuse to create a little separation between us. It's for one mission, and it turns out that Chuck is going to be safely locked in the Castle for the duration of the mission, so the timing couldn't be any better."

"That's a pretty cold way to treat Bartowski, just to turn things around like that."

"Well, he's a big boy. He'll just have to handle it."

For one of the few times since Casey had become her partner, she had him off-balance, if not fully convinced. His eyes narrowed. "And you and Barker? There's nothing more than driving a wedge between you and Chuck?"

"Even if there is, it's just one mission, and more than that, it's none of your business."

"It's none of my business as long as it doesn't affect anything."

"And it won't. You do your job; let me worry about mine."

Casey seemed uncertain. He stood silent for a long moment, eyeing her suspiciously. She stared right back at him. It was easy enough to do, as it was all the truth - minus a key detail or two. However, those details also were none of his business.

"All right, Walker. But if I see anything that indicates that your playtime with Barker in any way threatens the mission–"

"What? You'll run tell Beckman? Now who's the eighth grader?"

The scowl returned to the NSA agent's face. Without another word, he turned and exited the store.

Sarah watched him leave. The tension left the room, but not her body. She smoothed back her hair and stretched her neck, trying to unwind.

All in all, she felt pretty good about how she had handled Casey, and even how she had handled Chuck. As she had told Casey, it was necessary. It was the right thing to do, even if it didn't feel right at all.

Still, she had to hope that she could handle those remaining, nagging little details just as well. Right now, it still hurt like hell to push Chuck away, but she needed to do it.

For both their sakes.

-o-

Chuck couldn't decide if Saturday had passed too slowly or too quickly. Either way, the moment that he dreaded was here. He descended into the Castle, the deep metallic door securing him inside with a clang that reverberated through the empty chamber below.

He normally didn't mind working in the Castle alone, but tonight the dimness of the space only highlighted his dark mood. The lack of windows and the airtight security made for a Spartan work environment. Even the variety of cool electronic toys at his disposal didn't help.

There was no help for it. Sighing, Chuck threw on his headset and adjusted a receiver to the appropriate frequency. "Black Flag, this is Robin's Nest," he said. The stupid code words only added to his mood.

"'bout time," Casey responded over the radio. "We're hot. Feeds should be transmitting."

Chuck adjusted the receiver frequency and depressed a sequence of buttons. One by one, the various screens in front of him burst into life, showing views of the embassy from ten different cameras. "Surveillance is online," he said dully.

"Keep your eyes peeled. They should be entering any moment."

Great. He would see Sarah soon, dressed in something stunning as she went to an elegant ball with a charming British agent. He'd have to watch her every move from the bench as she pretended, or, if last night were any indication, didn't pretend to be enraptured by the man. That would be pouring salt in the still-fresh wounds left from their afternoon conversation.

Tonight's mission held all the appeal of a root canal.


	6. Idiom

_I've given up promising when my next update will come; let's just say things haven't gone the way I've expected over the past couple of weeks. __Sorry for the delay._

_I feel badly enough that I posted three chapters at once. Please take the time to review each, if you have something to say._

_FWIW, I'm sure some of what happened to MI6 has trickled into my subconscious at this point, although I still haven't sat down and watched the episodes. I know I've written two scenes that, in concept, mirror scenes that actually happened on the show. However, I only know that the scenes happen, and I don't know how they play out._

_In the end, I suppose none of that really matters. Either the story stands up on its own, or it doesn't._

_Enjoy._

* * *

An icy gray Aston Martin DBS cruised into the bustling front circle of the British embassy, joining a line of other expensive cars. Bright lights highlighted the rich garments of the throng of party guests making their way inside. A small army of valets created a blur of green velvet vests as they tried to keep cars and guests moving.

Cole guided the car to a halt. Leaving the engine running, he hopped out of the car and smoothly slipped some bills into the hand of the attending valet. Another valet assisted Sarah from the vehicle. She waited for him to circle around so she could take his proffered arm, as any proper date would. The two climbed the granite steps towards the front entrance.

Given the black-tie affair, Sarah had chosen a low-backed red dress that hugged her torso and deceptively flowed about her legs, affording both the appropriate elegance and ease of movement. Her hair was piled high, cascading in soft waves from the crown of her head.

Cole wore the expected black tux with a black tie, perfectly set into place, as was every tooth in his grin and every last strand of his artfully tousled hair. His movements were easy without a hint of wasted motion as he escorted Sarah through the front door, debonairly smiling his thanks to the doorman.

In the opulently decorated foyer, the two made the required stop at the welcoming table, where Cole signed them in. He took up one of the pennant-shaped red, white and blue ribbons and pinned it to his lapel, signifying that he was an employee of the embassy.

After nodding their thanks, the pair moved towards the large doorway leaving the foyer. A series of free-standing signs and helpful attendants guided the way to the festivities.

As they walked down an elegant hallway, he leaned down to her. "You look exquisite," he whispered, just a hint of hot breath tickling the lobe of her ear.

She felt herself blush the slightest bit. "Focus on the mission," she whispered back, but her tone made it clear that she wasn't entirely bothered.

"You should have worn something less enticing," he countered, and the two exchanged a little smile before they both returned to the business at hand.

They stopped just past a large doorway. Cole shoved his hands into his pants pockets and Sarah clasped both hands about her purse as they surveyed the next room from the top of the small set of carpeted steps.

The chosen ballroom was an enormous space, one hundred feet across and three times as deep. The room seemed to carry a golden glow about it, caused by a series of three enormous glass chandeliers reflecting off tile and columns laden with rich yellows and subtle, dark red accents. The cold stonework was softened by a backdrop of gold-colored ceiling-to-floor curtains bracing tall windows on the far wall.

The columns cordoned off the center of the room for numerous round tables and a good-sized dance floor at the far end of the room. The tablescapes, with their brilliant white tablecloths and enormous blue-and-red flower centerpieces, had obviously been chosen to mirror the colors of the British flag. Dark wood furniture and gigantic golden-gilt framed portraits along the neutra walls of the room completed the palette.

A twelve-piece ensemble of musicians was arranged on risers in front of the windows, playing loudly enough to encourage dancing but not loudly enough to overwhelm the buzz of innumerable intimate and not-so-intimate conversations among the well-heeled guests filling in the room. Sarah frowned. Finding a leak here was going to be finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

"How's your English accent?" Cole asked.

"Passable," she said, her accent shifting to match the request.

"Not bad. Can you keep your accent all night?"

"Of course. Can you?" She grinned impishly.

"Touché. Shall we begin?" Cole extended his arm and a charming smile.

After she took his arm, the pair walked into the room. Simon Lynch began introducing himself and his date, Sarah Wilson, to a variety of his ostensible new colleagues.

* * *

More than anything, Chuck wanted to look away. While he still had no idea just how much of Sarah's enjoyment was genuine, it still hurt to watch her smiling and flirting with another man. All he could do was tell himself that Sarah was just doing her job so that he could try to do the same. Otherwise, he was quickly going to go crazy.

Unsurprisingly, Casey wasn't helping matters any. With the radio set for Chuck and Casey to hear Cole and Sarah but not the reverse, Casey decided to help pass the time by tossing occasional little darts at Chuck. His latest was, "Agent Barker seems to be getting jealous looks from more than a few stuffed shirts tonight, doesn't he?"

Chuck decided that enough was enough. "Casey, I can't hear what they're saying if you keep interrupting."

"Trying to pick up some tips from Barker, eh? I don't blame you. You can try them out on your next cover girlfriend."

"You could use the tips yourself. I'm pretty sure Lester has had dates more recently than you."

Apparently the sharpness of the comeback surprised Casey, as the radio fell silent. Chuck felt no satisfaction; he was just grateful for a few moments of silence.

Sarah and Cole wandered the room, talking to whoever they encountered. The two quickly fell into a groove, playing off each other's comments and inevitably leaving people laughing with a final wry remark. Even language barriers didn't slow them down; by Chuck's count, they had already spoken three different languages.

They just seemed to fit together, Chuck concluded reluctantly. They made a terrific couple.

It got even worse when Cole took Sarah and escorted her to the dance floor. Watching from the main security camera in the room, the two stood out among the other guests. Chuck was hard-pressed to decide which agent was the more graceful.

* * *

Sarah could appreciate the logic behind the couple taking to the dance floor, as it put them in view of the most people in case their cover was blown and helped cement their cover in case it wasn't.

However, in a way, it was making things more difficult. The band was playing a waltz, and while the two of them may have looked effortless as they whirled around the floor, a certain measure of her thoughts was occupied by making it look effortless.

His hands were also making it difficult to think. There was something about the way his hand rested on her waist and the way his fingers stroked the skin of her hand. It was distracting in an all-too-pleasing way, and they couldn't afford distractions.

"I'm having trouble focusing when you do that," she said after his fingertips gently caressed her hip before slipping back to her waist.

"Really," he said coyly. His fingertips repeated the motion even as he continued scanning the room as they whirled.

"We have a job to do." This time, a trace of irritation crept into her voice.

"I think we're doing our job rather well. We've got a fantastic view of the room, and if we're here as bait, we're certainly dangling in front of any predators in the room."

"Well, keep your own predatory instincts under control."

"OK, but I can only promise that for the moment."

Something about the way he said it was playful without being arrogant. She found herself grinning again as the two circled the dance floor.

* * *

"See anything?" Casey asked.

Chuck started guiltily. "Nothing," he replied.

In truth, he had been a little too focused on Sarah and Cole's conversation and the jealous little knot in his gut. It suddenly occurred to Chuck that the only control he had over the couple was if he flashed – in other words, if he did his job. As a bonus, the plan gave Chuck an excuse to not watch Sarah being charmed by the handsome Brit.

Part of him managed to feel guilty that he needed ulterior motives to fulfill his role, but he shoved that aside. He was carrying enough emotional baggage at the moment. He eagerly scanned the other cameras.

"The picture quality is terrible," Chuck complained. He looked down and ran his eyes across the console. The labels on one panel reminded him that the Castle video system had some distortion processing capabilities that could clean up the images. Pulling out the manual, he quickly thumbed through the index, and then to the indicated page. After a minute or two of reading, he messed with the controls on the panel. The monitors flashed in turn as the filters kicked in, brightening and sharpening each picture.

That was much better. Chuck's eyes jumped from monitor to monitor, impressed with the improvement. He could now make out far more detail on each of the attendees, from the ruby-studded comb in a brown-haired woman's hair to the petals in the boutonniere on a suit jacket…

Chuck's eyelids fluttered and grew heavy.

_A commercial airliner taking off from a runway._

_A picture of the boutonniere._

_A file folder with the word "Idiom" written on it._

_A neatly formatted document with a list of reports, the originating organization, and a price. Organizations ranged from governments to companies to intelligence agencies; prices were six to eight figures. A number of reports were marked as already sold._

_Some overlapping phrases from conversations of purported members of the organization._

_The airplane taking off._

Chuck shook out of his flash. "Casey! Camera six. See the man with the white orchid boutonniere?"

There was silence for a moment. "Yeah?"

"The boutonniere is a marker: a dendrobium orchid matched with a stem of eucalyptus. It's how buyers can recognize the man as a member of a league of information brokers called Idiom. They collect government secrets and sell them to whoever has enough money."

"Can you identify Mr. Frilly Flower?"

The boutonniere was visible in the corner of the camera, but the man's face was mostly out of view. Chuck wondered if the man might have chosen the spot deliberately. "Maybe if you can get me a shot of the guy's face. I don't exactly have a good view from the cheap seats."

"I'll see what I can do. Anything else?"

"Have Cole and Sarah offer to buy the guy some thirty-year old scotch."

"Leave the spy work to the professionals. I'm pretty sure Barker and Walker are fully capable of introducing themselves."

"No, Casey," Chuck said with exaggerated patience. "It's a pass-phrase to indicate an interest in doing business."

"Oh," the NSA agent said, clearly taken aback. "Sorry."


	7. Scotch and Some Light Reading

_Checking ... checking ... nope, still don't own Chuck._

* * *

A pair of earpieces gave the slightest hiss, and then Casey's voice came through clearly. "Target identified. Look for a man in a black tuxedo with a white orchid boutonniere; he's standing by a pillar opposite the middle bar on the east wall. Believed to be a member of Idiom, a group of intelligence brokers. Mention thirty-year old scotch to identify yourself as buyers."

Barker signaled his intentions with his hands; a bit reluctantly, Sarah allowed him to guide them to a stop. "Suddenly I find myself parched," he said with a smile. "You?"

Sarah nodded, surprised to find herself slightly disappointed. Still, her disappointment at the end of their dance was more than balanced by the progress on the mission. She snapped fully back into agent mode.

The two navigated between a few dancing couples and through the crowd towards the designated area of the room. "There he is," Sarah said through motionless lips and smiling teeth.

Their target, a silver-haired man with a pointy beard, stood by one of the stone pillars buttressing the raised center portion of the room's ceiling. He wore a ribbon like Cole's on the lapel of his own black tuxedo. As Sarah and Cole approached, he kept a pair of other gentlemen in similar garb entertained with a joke, giving the agents an entrée into the conversation.

"…and the captain said, 'Fetch me my brown pants.'" The two other men burst into gales of laughter.

Noting that his audience had grown to include a woman, the silver-bearded speaker seemed almost apologetic. "Just a bit of humor to liven up the evening."

"No, no," Sarah said. "The pirate captain, 'fetch me my red shirt', 'fetch me my brown pants'. It's one of my favorites." Actually, it was one of the Buy More crew favorites. She smiled fondly at the memory of Chuck and his friends talking like pirates as they went about their jobs. When she realized what she was smiling about, she had to work to keep the smile from fading.

Cole added, "You know, the only thing better than a good joke is a good scotch."

The man's eyes widened slightly. "A scotch lover. Tremendous. I have a penchant for the good stuff myself. I happen to know that they have some Glen Livet, aged twelve years, at the last bar – but I didn't tell you that."

"My boyfriend is a bit of a snob when it comes to scotch," Sarah confessed. "He won't drink a drop unless it's at least thirty years old with a thick coat of dust on the bottle."

"Connoisseurs, I see. Well, you're in luck: it just so happens that I know where you might obtain a little." He said to the two other men, "If you two will excuse us for a moment?" The other men took their leave with polite nods of their heads.

"I'm George Finchman," the man with the orchid said. "And you are?"

"Simon Lynch, and this is Sarah Wilson."

"Charmed," George said, taking Sarah's hand and kissing it. "Why don't we take a walk?"

The bearded man shepherded the agents out of the party area and down an ornately decorated hallway. Sarah effortlessly ignored the distractions of furniture and decorations and instead mentally cataloged surveillance cameras, security measures, and potential escape routes. She had infiltrated a British embassy once before, and this one was every bit as secure as the other.

A security guard watched over a velvet rope blocking access from a bank of elevators at the base of a back staircase. With a nod from their guide, the guard removed the rope from one of the stands, allowing the three to pass. Finchman eschewed the elevators for the steps.

Two floors up, the noises from the party had all but vanished as Finchman led them partway down the hallway. He opened the door to the third office on the right and indicated the two should enter.

The office was appointed with an elegant balance of style and decorum. An enormous wooden desk with a precisely arranged workspace was surrounded by rich wooden bookcases and an ornately carved secretary. Lamps with crystal shades were mounted on sconces on the buttery-hued walls. Muted green curtains with an embroidery of patterns bracketed windows gazing out over the low warehouses and office spaces of the surrounding area.

The only part of the room that didn't reflect elegance was the hulking man hunched over the table, reading a British tabloid. His finely tailored suit couldn't hide the crudeness of his manner, the long stringy white-blonde hair or the ridiculously thick moustache dripping off the sides of his top lip down to his chin. He stood up as the trio entered the room.

"The head of my security detail, Terry Bollea," Finchman said dismissively. Sarah certainly didn't intend to dismiss the man; his hard expression and his slow but powerful movements carried a suggestion of inexorable pain should she end up on his bad side.

As Finchman went to take a seat behind his desk, Bollea took up a flanking position behind the chair. "So, what can I do for you, Mr. Lynch. Ms. Wilson." The 'if those are your real names' went unspoken.

"I hear you're a man who acquires information," Cole said.

"I acquire fine scotch, but I suppose a man in my position occasionally stumbles across information as well." He leaned back in his chair, clearly at ease with the situation.

"We're looking for a report on counterintelligence activities in the United States that recently ... disappeared from Langley."

Sarah had to fight to keep her face set. She had heard rumors about the creation of that particular report. A team of thirty-five analysts had been working for nearly two years to assemble information from a variety of different sources. All groups known or suspected to be conducting espionage in the United States were included in the brief, and that probably included Fulcrum activities as well. She hadn't heard that it had been stolen.

The report contained lists of operations, bases for those operations, and known agents. The bases and agents were being watched and used as bait for larger scores against those groups. If any of the groups under surveillance got a copy of that report, they would have a full list of every last known lead the US intelligence community had on them. They could quickly excise the compromised assets from their operations, leaving the DNI in the dark once more.

It was becoming a bit disconcerting to see Cole drag out just the right piece of information at the right time yet again: first identifying her clothes in the restaurant, then his knowledge of John Casey's past, and now what had to be a highly protected secret of the CIA. MI6 agents were uncanny in their ability to pull out just the right piece of information when they needed it.

Finchman's face became coy at Cole's suggestion; he started rocking forward and back in his chair the slightest bit. "If I knew of such a report, I suspect it would be a very valuable item, wouldn't it."

Sarah spoke, careful to keep her English accent in place. "It depends. Hypothetically, if you could put your hands on that report, would it be the only copy?"

"Hypothetically, I would suspect the right price would ensure the destruction of all other copies."

"That would be a valuable service."

"One would think."

"If you actually have the report," Cole added dryly.

"Indeed."

Sarah and Cole glanced at each other. They needed to tread carefully here.

"So," Cole said, "can we do business?"

"Well, it depends on the business. We came here to discuss scotch. I'm not sure what your price range is, but I happen to have a particularly rare bottle that I'd be willing to part with for fifteen thousand dollars, with a one thousand dollar finder's fee."

It took Sarah a moment to catch on. The man was being very careful not to say that he was selling the report in case he was being monitored. The actual price was a multiple of the two numbers, or fifteen million dollars.

"That seems a touch pricey for a bottle of scotch," Sarah noted.

"Not for this bottle."

"I can't imagine the best scotch is worth more than ten thousand dollars, with a five hundred dollar finder's fee."

"Were I in your shoes, I would think very carefully about that price. There seems to be a large amount of interest in this particular vintage."

Cole was about to make another offer, but Carver cut him off by holding up his hand. "I dislike haggling. I already have a very favorable offer, but the buyer seems more interested in threats than doing business. So, if you were to find twelve thousand dollars and the full finder's fee within the next twelve hours, we have a deal. Otherwise, I will go back to the other buyer and take my chances." He paused, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. "Perhaps your offer will even spur his interest."

"Perhaps we're just as dangerous as the other buyer."

At that, Finchman actually laughed. "I doubt that."

"I think I'm insulted," Cole said. His pleasant expression developed the slightest hint of an edge.

The smile fled from Finchman's face. "Don't be. In fact, part of the reason the price is so high is because the extra money will balance the extra risk."

She traded another glance with Cole. "Well, we don't tend to carry that kind of cash around." Sarah said. "We need at least twenty-four hours; forty-eight would be better."

Finchman pursed his lips. His face suggested that he wasn't happy with the idea, but he ended up acceding. "You have until tomorrow night at 8 pm." He reached into his pocket and produced a piece of standard business card stock with some printing on it. "Come to this address, and we can do business. However, after 8 o'clock, the offer is null and void."

Cole stepped forward and accepted the card, taking only a cursory glance at the writing before slipping it into his jacket pocket. He gave Finchman a quick smile before he escorted Sarah towards the door with a gentle hand in the small of her back.

"Oh, one other thing."

The pair turned back around. Finchman eyed Cole. "I notice that you work at the embassy. You just started your assignment?"

Cole glanced down at the ribbon on his lapel. "That's correct," he answered.

"Whether or not you accept my offer, I suggest you search for employment elsewhere. Whoever you are, your time at this particular embassy is finished."

Apparently that point wasn't up for negotiation. "I'll tender my resignation in the morning," Cole acceded in a friendly tone.

The coldness vanished from Finchman's face. "Eight o'clock," he reminded them. He nodded at Bollea, who walked the two into the hallway, his mammoth frame blocking Finchman from their view. The door shut very firmly behind them.

"Well, that wasn't particularly friendly," Cole said wryly. He looked over at Sarah and made a show of patting down his pockets. "You wouldn't happen to have a few million dollars on you you? I seem to be a bit light."

"I might," she said in a bit of a playful tone as they headed for the stairway. "Although I have to say it's a bit unchivalrous to ask me to pick up the check."

"If I picked up a check of that size, you might feel inappropriately obligated towards me."

"We couldn't have that, could we."

"Well, maybe just a little."

She gave an easy laugh. The man was incorrigible, but in such a good way.

The two navigated back to the party and through the mob of couples towards the front circle, chatting amiably the entire way. They spoke of nothing in particular; coy little quips intermingled with sly bits of flirting as the two reprised their lithe movements on the dance floor with their conversation. Casual words continued to flow effortlessly as valets retrieved their car.

As they drove off into the night, Sarah found herself glancing over at the British agent during a break in the conversation. She felt relaxed. She felt comfortable. She felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

She realized that when she was with Cole, for the first time in a long time, she felt free of the unsolvable dilemma that Chuck presented.

* * *

Back in the Castle, Chuck leaned forward in his chair, burying his face in his hands. Listening to Sarah's conversation with Cole was almost more than he could bear.

Casey's voice came out of the ether. "All right, Bartowski, they've left. We're heading home."

Chuck looked up. "Roger that," he said, his tone flat and his expression morose. He removed his headphones with a pained expression of relief, dropping them onto the console before leaning back in the chair and running his hands across his tired face.

This wasn't the worst night of his life, but it was quickly climbing the charts.


	8. Coming Home

_FYI, I posted three chapters at once, so be sure to start with Chapter 6..._

* * *

The voice-activated control panel next to the Castle entrance activated. Chuck tensed. There was no getting around this moment.

Cole, Sarah and Casey entered the room, the first two still in their evening regalia and Casey in his customary black mission outfit. The big man lugged an enormous black duffel down the stairs in advance of the more casually approaching Cole and Sarah.

The best thing Chuck could do was to help the debriefing go quickly. He sent a signal to General Beckman, indicating that the group was ready.

The tactic worked. The general activated the video monitor at the precise moment the three agents entered the heart of the room. "Report?" was all she said.

"Good news, General," Casey replied, dropping the duffel onto a work table before turning to address her more formally. "We identified an embassy employee, one George Finchman, as a member of Idiom"

"Idiom?" For once, the general actually sounded excited. "We've been trying to break into their ranks for a long time. Terrific work."

"We should be able to pick up Finchman when he reports for work tomorrow."

"Do we have anything concrete on him?"

"Not yet," Casey confessed.

"However," Cole added, "he did agree to sell us a report stolen from the CIA for twelve-point-five million dollars tomorrow evening."

"That's a lot of money. What was the report?" the general asked, intrigued.

"A comprehensive study on counterintelligence groups in the United States."

"Let me get this straight: he's offered to sell you the SCOUSA report?"

"I do believe it goes by that name, yes, ma'am."

Beckman somehow managed to appear both highly irritated with the man and excited by the news. She quickly composed herself. "Agent Barker, would your government be amenable to letting Finchman work out the day tomorrow? If you know about that report, you know its importance to us. We'd like the opportunity to retrieve this report at the rendezvous tomorrow night, and it would land concrete evidence to put Finchman away."

"I anticipated that you might feel this way, so I contacted your counterpart at MI6. She should be in touch you shortly."

"Wait a minute, General," Casey interjected. "We're really going to let this guy wander around the British embassy for another day? Who knows what other secrets he might ferret out in that time? Or what if he decides to skip the meeting? We should just bring him in and interrogate him."

"It's a risk, Agent Casey, but one we need to take. This report is simply too important to let an opportunity like this pass us by. If MI6 is willing, we'll have them keep a close eye on Mr. Finchman tomorrow. One way or the other, his time at the embassy will soon be done, and the leak will be plugged."

Casey clearly wasn't happy, but, as usual, he wasn't about to disobey an order. "Yes, ma'am."

"Unless something changes, we'll reconvene tomorrow afternoon for a pre-mission briefing. Again, good work everyone." The screen went blank.

Chuck gave a quick look to his handlers. Casey was delving into some paperwork on the table, while Sarah and Cole were talking about some aspect of their mission. Nobody seemed to be paying Chuck much mind.

He was done. Wordlessly, he slipped through the group and tried to escape unnoticed.

As Chuck headed for the exit, a voice stopped him. Unlike so many previous times, this time the voice was male and carried a British accent.

"Agent Carmichael," Cole called.

Reluctantly, Chuck stopped at the foot of the stairs. He turned and looked at the British agent as he crossed the room and stood in front of him.

"Thank you." The MI6 agent offered his hand and a solemn, truly grateful look.

Chuck took the hand quizzically. "I don't understand. I really didn't do anything."

"Sure you did. Well, maybe not tonight, but I can't tell you how many times I've been saved because somebody was watching my back, even from a distance."

Their hands detached. Chuck must have appeared unconvinced, because Cole continued, "Success of a mission often hinges on the little things, and you're the last line of defense. If a mission turns ugly, you'll make the call to send in the cavalry. If we need a key piece of intel, you'll provide it in a timely fashion. It's a good night – and a rare one – when people like you aren't necessary. But on any given night, you can be the difference between a successful mission and an agent not coming home." He locked eyes with Chuck. "I just wanted to make sure you know that you're appreciated, even if tonight we got a little lucky and didn't need your help."

The man who so attracted Sarah's attention just made his night a little better. Somehow, that just made everything worse.

A soft but sincere little, "Thank you," and a wan smile of appreciation was all Chuck could muster. Without another word, he headed up the steps.

As he reached the top platform, his shoulders slumped as he remembered that he didn't have a car. "Could somebody give me a ride home?"

Cole curiously watched Sarah and Casey. The two became more and more forceful as each wordlessly urged the other to go. After about ten seconds of the give and take, Chuck surrendered. "Forget it. I'll take a cab." He turned and punched a code into the panel so he could exit.

"Hang on," Casey called irritably, glaring at Sarah. He grabbed a pair of folders and his black duffel from the table and dashed across the room, mounting the steps two at a time, catching up with Chuck as he left the room.

The vault door shut behind the pair. Cole turned to Sarah and asked, "I'm curious. What did Carmichael do that makes you guys treat him like that? He seems like a pretty good guy to have on the team, but you two seem to mostly ignore him."

Sarah didn't have a good answer for Cole. At the moment, she simply preferred to be alone with Cole than with Chuck, for a variety of reasons.

* * *

Casey and Chuck strode into the vacant courtyard outside their apartments. The walk, like the ride, was unblemished by any words.

Chuck took one last look at Casey and decided to leave the silence unmarred. He headed towards the front door to the apartment, anxious to have the day over and done.

"Bartowski."

Had Chuck not been in such a foul mood, he would have noticed the word carried a tone unusual for the NSA agent. As it was, the wavy-haired man spun around and almost blurted something he would have regretted. The only thing that stopped him was the strange twisting in the agent's face, almost as if his face muscles were rebelling against adopting an uncomfortable and unfamiliar expression.

That was enough to get Chuck to arch a curious eyebrow.

Casey struggled to force out a coherent sentence. "Listen … I may have treated you a bit … unfairly … over the past few days." The agent paused; his face made it clear that he hoped the terse admission was sufficient.

Chuck took a pair of steps back towards the man. "OK," he said, legitimately confused.

Frustration at having to say anything more overwhelmed the agent's face. With an obvious exertion of will, he calmed himself. His eyes darted around as he searched for words.

"I believed, and sti… I believed that your feelings for Agent Walker were going to cause you to act … unprofessionally when a mission was on the line, and I took that out on you in advance." He took a deep breath, as if he were preparing to lift a huge weight over his head. "It turns out that I may have been … mistaken."

"Wait," Chuck said. His eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to apologize to me?!"

"No!" the agent barked. He immediately grimaced. "Well, actually … a little."

Chuck folded his arms and rocked back slightly onto his right leg, waiting patiently for more.

A manic look in Casey's eyes suggested that he was considering whether strangling the other man might just be easier. Again, with a deliberate effort, he managed to push aside his emotions.

His next words carried the tone of a man who knew what needed to be said but resented the need to say it. They poured out of him in a rush with an almost mocking lilt to them. "During the mission tonight, you performed far more professionally than I, and I wanted you to know that I realize it couldn't have been easy. Going forward, I will try to refrain from provoking you vis a vis Agent Walker, or acting in a manner that might threaten our common missions and goals." He finally took a breath, looking like a man in dire need of a hot, cleansing shower. "There, you happy?!" he demanded.

It was all Chuck could do not to grin widely at just how difficult that had been for Casey. "That may very well have been the worst apology I have ever witnessed," he said slowly. The agent's face darkened. "And," Chuck added, "it was absolutely perfect. Thank you."

A range of emotions crossed the agent's face. Twice, he looked like he was about to add a snarky little remark, then realized at the last minute that would go against everything he had just worked so hard to accomplish.

Casey finally nodded. "Glad that's settled." He sounded like a man trying to convince himself. "Good night, Bartowski."

Something occurred to Chuck. "Casey?"

"Yeah?"

"Is that why Beckman is acting so cold towards me?"

"Walker never talked to you, did she."

Chuck shook his head.

Casey cursed under his breath. "Looks like I was worried about the wrong person acting unprofessionally."

"What's that?"

The NSA agent ignored the question. "Agent Walker was supposed to tell you that it is critical that MI6 be kept unaware of your importance, so you may not be treated the same way as you normally are when Agent Barker is in the room. You also find yourself on the bench a bit more than usual - like last night."

It took a bit to sink in. Casey had been worried about Chuck's performance, while the general was worried that Cole would learn he was the Intersect. It all made sense.

A glimmer of hope bloomed in Chuck's chest. "Is that why Sarah has been flirting with Agent Barker so much? To distract him?"

A steady, stoic look and a pregnant pause gave Chuck his answer. He swallowed hard.

"Good night, Bartowski," was all Casey said. He slipped into his apartment, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Chuck stared after departed agent. Casey's non-answer had punctured the little balloon of hope inside him, causing Chuck to deflate.

He found himself alone, hands in pockets, staring up at the clear but cold night sky. He couldn't seem to see the stars; all he could see was vast, black emptiness between the tiny pinpricks of light.

* * *

In the bowels of the Castle, Sarah slipped into something more comfortable. She had been finding it hard to focus on her mission report as breezes from the hyperactive cooling system tickled the naked small of her back. The thought of Cole's warm hand sliding across the smooth skin provided an occasional shiver as well.

She donned her favorite black track suit. Sure, they were bordering on sweats, but they trimly hugged her figure, so they were both comfortable and flattering. Besides, she didn't have many options tucked away at the Castle.

Sarah had also decided to take her hair down, as her formal hairdo was beginning to give her a headache. She stared in a mirror as she removed the various pins, including several with dual uses, intending to replace them with a simple black cuff to create a pony tail. Even if she was putting in a little extra effort, doing anything more would have made it obvious she was putting in extra effort.

As she worked, Cole's earlier question crept into her mind. Beckman had been very specific that the MI6 agent was not to find out that Chuck had any value other than that of a junior level analyst. Still, Sarah recognized that she had used the orders as an excuse not to talk to Chuck at all, and the net result was that nobody had bothered to tell Chuck what was going on. Casey rightly expected her to be the one to explain that to Chuck; that was the way the team dynamic worked.

Even realizing that now, she was hesitant to tell Chuck anything. It would be slipping into old patterns, patterns as comfortable as her track suit, where she would explain something and he would be endearingly grateful and ... it was just easier to let the chasm grow.

For her part, she needed new patterns as well, something to distract herself from the unpleasantness with the guilt and pain she felt over treating Chuck this way. It was she that had always maintained that the two could never be anything more, and it was she that, from time to time, had slipped and given Chuck false hope - and given herself false hope as well.

Sarah by no means fancied herself an expert on romantic relationships, serious or otherwise, but many of the books she had read as a youth suggested that timing was a key element. The reality was that Cole had come along at just the right time. He was just what Sarah needed.

Her pony tail set, she examined herself one last time in the mirror. Her tasteful application of make-up was a bit overdone for the situation, but she had an excuse to leave it in place, and she intended to do just that. It was time to see if there was a convenient way both to fill the hole in her aching heart and to show Chuck, once and for all, that the two of them would never be.


	9. Charms

_Thanks to everyone who provided their feedback, positive and negative. It was fantastic to get so many points of view on the same chapter._

* * *

Sarah proofread a copy of her mission report at a small desk towards the back corner of the room. She had typed up the report on one of the Castle's computers and had printed a hard copy for a final edit before sending it off. Attention to detail was a learned habit and a point of pride for the one-time wild youth.

Everything looked good, except the willful omission under the "Possible Complications" section. Cole definitely qualified, but she had no intention of making note of her interest in him.

She was so focused on the report that she nearly missed the approach of the complication. Cole, his jacket and tie discarded and the top buttons of his formal shirt carelessly unbuttoned, startled her slightly as he leaned against the desk.

"Almost done?" he asked with a friendly smile.

She looked up with a deprecating smile. "Almost. I'm sure you know the joys of mission reports."

"Ironic that the most distasteful aspect of our jobs might be the paperwork."

"I don't mind the paperwork so much. It helps me to remember what I've accomplished and reminds me of my mistakes."

"Any mistakes tonight?"

"Nothing major. However, you managed to scuff my shoe during our dance. Where do I send the bill?" She grinned impishly.

He feigned offense. "I did no such thing."

"I can show you the mark on my shoe."

"That evidence easily could have been planted after the fact."

"Fine, I'll take it out. But you owe me one."

He grinned. "Two can play that game you know. Wait until you hear about my report."

Despite herself, her throat caught the slightest bit. She knew she was being irrationally insecure, especially since she had started the little game, but the job was the only thing that was truly hers so she could be forgiven for being a little overprotective of it. "And what does your report say?" she asked, managing to keep her playful tone intact.

He knelt down on one knee next to her chair and gazed up at her. His voice was buttery softness spiced by his accent. "It says that Agent Walker, in her capacity as Sarah Wilson, performed extraordinarily in her role, maintained exceptional poise at all times and was the epitome of professionalism throughout the entire mission. A pleasure to work with. Full marks in every respect."

Her worries dissipated, replaced by the warmth of the praise - and something more. Afraid he could see right through her, she tried to deflect to cover just how pleased she was. "Couldn't you have put something complimentary in there?" she joked.

"I suppose I did leave a thing or two out," he said coyly.

Her throat caught again, but for an entirely different reason. "Like what?"

Subtly, his face began to rise towards hers. "Like how extraordinarily difficult it was to focus on the mission at hand. Like how the gaze of every man in the room was jealously fixed upon my would-be date. Like how the biggest risk of capture came from your electric blue eyes…"

Cole trailed off as his gentle lips found hers, his kisses as eloquent as his words.

A swirling of sensations engulfed her, warmth and wetness, his teasing lips and her pounding heart. The roughness of his re-emerging beard didn't burn; rather, it added another delicious texture to the kiss.

Each used their hands to steady the other's cheeks, preventing any kind of accidental, tortuous separation. She constantly found herself eager for the next moment while reluctant to let the current one go.

Seconds or minutes or hours later, their mouths separated, but connection remained, eyes locked on each other as tightly as any embrace.

One of the computers mounted on a rack across the room chirped, and the sense of rightness was suddenly gone. Sarah looked over almost angrily, half-expecting to find that Chuck had intruded and deliberately triggered the noise to dispel the magic of the moment.

The room was empty.

Of course Chuck wasn't there, but in a way, he was. The harsh electronic noise wasn't what truly dispelled the magic.

She bit her lip. Why couldn't something be easy for a change?

A short laugh escaped Cole's enticing mouth; she joined in, and the tension was largely broken. "Not the most romantic place," he noted.

"No, it's not," she said with an awkwardly shy smile.

His eyes assessed her for a moment. "We could continue this somewhere more appropriate."

She never said the words, but he saw the answer in her eyes.

His own expression wordlessly told her everything she needed to know. He was slightly puzzled, but he understood. If she changed her mind, she had but to ask.

Once again, the man had the perfect reaction. Kneeling next to her, he made the moment the best it could be, as he had so many others. He was utterly handsome, utterly charming, and utterly gentlemanly.

She was utterly puzzled why she didn't take him up on his offer.

On later reflection, she realized that simply wasn't true. Sarah knew exactly what made her hesitate.

She found herself wondering what she needed to do to get Chuck to let her go – or, more accurately, the other way around.

* * *

The iPhone rang, jarring Sarah from her not-so-restful slumber. She slid aside her sleep mask and somehow resisted the urge to crush the offending device under a swift attack from a clenched hand.

Instead, she reluctantly rolled over and struggled across the last few inches necessary to grab the phone from the nightstand. As she rolled back and collapsed onto her pillow, she held the phone above her and saw Casey's picture on the monitor. The phone beeped as she depressed the button to answer the call. "Agent Walker."

"Are you alone?" Casey asked.

"Of course I'm alone."

"I had to ask. After all, you and Agent Barker shared a very interesting moment at the Castle last night."

Sarah bolted upright; startled sheets scampered off of her torso. "I told you that's none of your business."

"And I told you it was none of my business as long as it doesn't affect anything. It became my business where you started ignoring your responsibilities so you could play with your life-sized MI6 action figure."

"The mission was a success, Casey. What do you want from me?"

"You were supposed to let Bartowski know about the changes with Agent Barker around."

She flinched. She had realized as much the previous night, and had still failed to do anything. In retrospect, even a simple text message could have solved the problem. "Fine. I'll talk to him today."

"No need. I explained it to him last night."

"Then what's the problem?!"

"My problem is that you keep going your own direction without involving me or Bartowski. It's starting to cause problems."

"Problems? There aren't any problems. You just said–"

"Were you even aware that your cover as Chuck's girlfriend is falling apart?"

Her face turned white. She hadn't had a chance to figure out what she was going to tell Beckman, let alone Casey, about Chuck wanting another break-up. "What did Chuck tell you?"

"Chuck didn't tell me anything. It's all that the Buy More drones can talk about in their little coffee klatches. How you never come around any more, how it was only a matter of time because Chuck isn't good enough for you…"

Casey was fishing with the last part, but he was using damn good bait. "Enough," was all she could manage.

"Get up," Casey said. "You've got work to do."

"Such as?"

"First, you're going over to the Buy More, where you and Chuck are going to perform on a little two-man show I like to call 'The Happy Couple'. It's a simple three-act piece: girl meets nerd, nerd and girl are happy together, nerd and girl leave the Buy More with their cover intact. Then you'll escort Chuck over to the Orange Orange for some hot and heavy briefing action where you'll start acting like a teammate for a change."

She searched for something that would allow her to push back, but aside from Casey's attitude, there was precious little. "Don't get used to ordering me around like this," she warned.

"Please, Walker, I'm cutting you a break. Any other agent would have reported all of this by now. Fix things, or I'll need to tell Beckman. Then the orders will start flying fast and furious."

-click-

* * *

Decked out in her Orange Orange outfit, Sarah entered the Buy More and strode towards the Nerd Herd desk. A bit surprised not to see Chuck at his post, she stopped and scanned the store, finally spotting him in the printer section. She straightened her shoulders and headed his way.

She stopped far enough away that he could finish with his customer without distraction. Chuck was saying, "…and I think you'll find this inkjet printer is everything you need for half the cost."

His customer, an older man wearing a floppy fishing hat and a beat-up flannel shirt, looked at Chuck as though he had just tried to summarize quantum physics in a few sentences. "But it's so much cheaper than that one," the man almost whined as he indicated a high-end laser printer. "How can it be nearly as good?"

"Trust me, sir," Chuck said. "This printer has everything you'll ever need."

The customer glared at Chuck as if the stare, honed over the many years, somehow contained the power to force Chuck to reveal any lie. Little did the man know that, even if Chuck were lying, he had seen far worse than an unpleasant store patron could dish out.

"OK," the man finally acceded. "But if you're taking me for a ride, you'll be hearing from me again."

Chuck handed the man one of the printer boxes from the display. "Here's to that never happening, sir." The grumpy customer managed to miss the veiled insult; he harrumphed as he took the box, muttering under his breath as he headed for a register.

Sarah took a deep breath. "Hi, sweetie," she said with forced cheerfulness as she took the last few steps towards him.

She wasn't fully prepared for the range of emotions that paraded across Chuck's face. His surprise at seeing her was quickly replaced by a momentary excitement, which quickly dissolved into a hurt disappointment. Even the disappointment didn't last long; it was quickly replaced by something so foreign to Chuck that she didn't immediately recognize it.

His expression contained something akin to dislike. It stung her more than she would have thought possible.

That slowed her approach the slightest bit; she followed through for the sake of their cover. She rose up and kissed him on the cheek, taking the opportunity to whisper, "You're supposed to be happy to see me."

"Am I now," he whispered back. She dropped back down her feet, surprised by the venom in his voice. The glare Chuck offered her would have made the departed customer blush as he realized what an amateur he truly was in that department.

The glare disappeared as Chuck surrendered to the need to rebuild their cover. Unable to handle the false smile of the man who smiled so easily, she used exiting the building as an excuse to look away, taking his hand and guiding him towards the main aisle.

He had picked up a thing or two from hanging around her and Casey. Chuck's smile relaxed and became more natural, and he spoke out of the side of his mouth. "I assume you haven't talked to Beckman about dissolving our cover yet?"

"Not yet," she said from behind her own fake grin. "I've been a little busy."

"I'll say." The two turned towards the front doors.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means."

"If you have something to say, just say it."

"That's pretty rich, coming from you."

_The two carefree lovers walked through their own little world. They exchanged a loving gaze, words escaping them. Big Mike looked up from some paperwork as he passed; he muttered something about disgustingly cutesy couples before continuing towards his office._

Chuck finally added, "Seems like you have plenty of time for Cole."

"Jealous?" she asked. She immediately regretted the comment. Chuck wasn't the bad guy here.

"Absolutely. That's what makes it so wrong. You know I'm jealous, yet you can't stop rubbing my face in it."

"I never rubbed it in your face."

"Oh, really, Miss Mission-Always-Comes-First? The flirting couldn't have waited until after the mission, after the debriefing?" He looked over at her. "Or was that reserved for the kissing?"

_Their intertwined hands swung carelessly between them as they just enjoyed being together. A pair of curly-haired, pimple-faced green shirts ran their eyes across the couple, lingering longer on Sarah, and shook their heads at Chuck's good fortune._

Casey must have shown Chuck the footage of her and Cole kissing, intentionally or unintentionally. Either way, every last year of Sarah's training and on-the-job experience were required to keep her bubbling anger trapped beneath the surface. Even all of that couldn't prevent frustration from seeping through her clenched teeth. "Why are you being like this? I was hoping you handle things professionally."

"Said the agent who spent a fair portion of her last assignment flirting with her partner. At least I'm bringing this up when we're off the clock."

"You're never off the clock as an agent."

"Wouldn't that make you unprofessional no matter when you sleep with Cole?"

"Who said anything about sleeping with him?" she asked, outraged.

"You haven't yet?" He sounded genuinely surprised. "I guess it's coming."

"Well, then, I guess that's not the only thing that will ..."

_The two stopped and faced each other near the front entrance. They stared lovingly into each other's eyes, the smiles fading as the moment overtook them. Anna watched them from the Hole, demanding that a customer wait a minute before turning back to watch the couple. As Chuck and Sarah searched each other's eyes, a hopeless, almost envious expression came to her face as the pair was lost in intense contemplation of each other._

Again, emotions had gotten the better of Sarah. Only at the last minute had she bitten back a truly biting retort, but the hardening at the edge of his eyes told her that enough had escaped that the damage had been done.

She tried to give the discussion a more constructive bent. Surely Chuck could understand. "An agent's opportunities for romance don't come around every day," she said. "You've got to grab the opportunities in front of you."

In a dry, defeated voice suddenly free of rancor, he replied, "I disagree very strongly with the first part, but I agree very, very much with the second."

And there it was again. Somehow, a tiny flame of hope still burned within Chuck. That flame leapt the gap between them, igniting a flicker of doubt within her own chest that sucked the air from her lungs and made it difficult for her to breathe.

She had to extinguish the flame, in both of them, for both of their sakes.

Sarah was trying to figure out exactly how to do that when his fingers tightened around hers and pulled her towards the exit. Chuck's face lit up with a mockery of his usual insouciant grin; she suddenly remembered her own neglected smile.

Chuck's shoulders slumped the slightest bit. "But that ship has already sailed, hasn't it. As impossible as things are for you and me, it's just that easy for you and Cole."

The words hurt. Even though this was exactly needed to happen, the words hurt. Her own success stunned her into silence.

They couldn't get out the door quickly enough. It was all she could do not to drop her mask.

"Have your fun with Cole." He looked over at her. "I'll be waiting in the car."

She watched the last of the embers slowly cool in his eyes; he turned away. The exit doors slid open to allow passage, and then closed behind them with a hiss that sounded suspiciously like the dousing of fire with water.

_Chuck and Sarah slowly wandered to the left, heading to the Orange Orange as usual. From his lookout post behind a Wii demo station, Morgan smugly held his hands up over his shoulders, palms up. _

_Grudgingly, Jeff and Lester slapped wads of bills into the respective palms, rewarding Morgan for his faith in his friend to maintain a happy, healthy relationship with Sarah._

* * *

Chuck and Sarah walked to the Orange Orange like soldiers marching across a drill yard in a frigid rain, keeping perfect formation while desperately trying to find a way to ignore the misery of the situation.

The short distance between the Buy More and the yogurt shop seemed to take forever to cover. Their pace was necessarily deliberate to maintain their cover. Fingers interlaced just enough to keep their hands linked. Eye contact was nonexistent. The absence of words tore at them both.

As soon as they entered the empty shop, Chuck snatched his hand away as if her fingers were burning his. Sarah locked the door as he determinedly bee-lined towards the back of the store, eager to put some separation between them.

"Would you wait a second?" she called.

Clearly in the mood for neither yogurt nor fun, he disappeared into the back room without so much as a glance back at her.

She shoved the store key into a pocket and broke into a run, catching up with him as he was about to open the vault door. "Chuck, please, we need to talk about this."

"What, now you want to talk?"

"I can explain."

He stopped punching in his code and turned to face her. "What, exactly, is there to talk about? You're clearly very interested in Cole, and you just as clearly don't care what your budding romance does to me. I may be missing something, but that doesn't seem to leave a lot to discuss."

"Chuck, this isn't about you. This is … I need this. After the time you got to spend with Lou and Jill, I thought you'd understand that."

"All I understand is when Agent Barker showed up, the Sarah Walker I knew vanished."

The statement clearly took her aback. "What?"

He took a step towards her, staring intently and coldly into her eyes. "You're right that I understand how frustrating dating is for you and for me. And you're right that it makes perfect sense that you'd adopt a carpe diem kind of attitude with Cole around. But the day after I basically tell you that I can't stand a fake relationship with you because it reminds me of what we'll never have, what do you do? You strike up a very real relationship and you basically force me to watch the whole time." He shrugged angrily. "What kind of person does that?"

Her face flushed. She realized that she had been so focused on her exit strategy that, in her effort to forget about her and Chuck, she had forgotten to think about Chuck at all. "Chuck, I didn't mean to–"

"On top of that, what just utterly baffles me is that this guy comes along, and your attitude towards me just completely transforms. Suddenly, you're cold and you're distant and, even while we're on missions, you barely speak to me. I mean, if nothing else, I always thought we were at least friends … but friends don't treat each other this way, do they."

Sarah just stared at Chuck. Her eyes were a mystery, clouded with only the slightest bit of emotion. She was truly a master at hiding her feelings.

The silence stretched out. Lacking any words from her, Chuck decided that all he had to go on were her actions. Her actions, and inactions, had spoken clearly enough.

He drew in a deep breath and said the last thing she expected to hear.

"I'd like my mother's bracelet back."

Sarah looked down at her wrist where the silver charm bracelet barely glimmered in the dim lighting of the back room. The huge knot of emotion in her chest doubled in size. It threatened to strangle her voice; she pushed through it. "Oh," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Of course."

Her numb and unwilling fingers struggled with the stubborn clasp. She thought about the last woman in Chuck's life who had worn that bracelet, and how as a child Chuck had felt so abandoned when she left. At least his mother had a good excuse. The knot in her chest shot tendrils into her stomach, summoning a burning, sickened feeling.

The catch finally let go; her hand whipped down to catch the bracelet in the palm. She looked down at it one last time, slowly wiggling her fingers as she tried to cause the different facets of the charms to catch and reflect tiny sparkles of light. There was precious little light in the room to catch.

She already missed the comforting weight of the trinket. "I never thought I'd be giving this back to you," she confessed, her voice cracking the slightest bit as she handed the bracelet to him.

Chuck looked at the bracelet and then at her, every last bit of his pain shining in his eyes. "Yeah. Me neither."


	10. Before and Aftermath

_If you don't like angst, you probably stopped reading this a while back, but this chapter continues that trend._

_I wrote three different versions of the next scene and finally settled on the following. The tone is a bit different; I hope you like it._

* * *

Sarah's eyes remained locked with Chuck's. She desperately wanted to pull her eyes to safety, but to do so meant an ending, an ending that hurt no less because she had engineered it. Emotions swirled within her, a mix of bitter regret and something more. The regret was all too familiar, something she had already experienced too many times in her life.

When Sarah was a child, she and her father frequently had to move, even if it was just to the other side of the same town. The scene was always the same as they left: the interior of whatever car suited their purposes at the time, a beat-up brown Chevy or a nice Buick or even the occasional shiny BMW, was crammed with the sum of their worldly possessions and whatever take they had managed from their latest con.

Leaving tended to be exciting, one way or the other. On the good days, flushed with their success, she would perch her knees on the edge of the back seat while she basked in her father's happiness and, oftentimes, in his pride in her. On the bad days, she'd fasten her seatbelt tightly around her waist and stay quiet while her father watched the rear-view mirror and tested the limits of their car du jour, cursing the tiniest setback as if the gods themselves were unfairly aligned against him.

Whether a good day or bad, there were times Sarah just wasn't ready to leave. She found herself longing for the normalcy other kids took for granted: a room of her own where her father could tuck her into a warm safe bed every night, a yard where she could play with friends that she'd had for more than a few weeks, and a school where her teachers could remember her name, even if it wasn't her real name. In those melancholy moments, she would hide in the corner of the back seat where her father couldn't see her in the rear-view, little legs pulled to her chest as she stared out the window, lost in thought about what she was leaving behind.

Her father would invariably notice her absence from the mirror and figure out what she was doing. He would somehow manage to mix smugness and affection into the same sly little smirk, and he would tell her, in his authoritarian but comforting voice, "Don't think about what you're leaving. Focus on what's ahead. As long as you're moving forward, there's never a need to look back."

That particular bit of advice had served her well in a number of different circumstances. It had helped whenever she and her father left town, on the bad days or the good. It had helped when she learned to drive; she would maneuver through cars on the road like slalom poles, never needing to worry about checking her rear-view mirror for anything more than the occasional police car that took exception to her speed. Mostly, though, it had helped as an agent, where at the conclusion of each mission, she tied up things as best she could and then quickly left town, glancing back only long enough to check for pursuit.

Still, as Sarah stood staring at the forlorn Chuck, she found herself remembering one particular time that she had looked back.

She and her father had stayed an unusually long time in the same place as her father ran an elaborate con on the owner of a car dealership. They had rented a basement apartment in an older neighborhood with sidewalks lined with tall, thick-trunked trees and bright green leaves that rustled delightfully in the wind.

Upstairs in the well-maintained white Tudor house lived Clowie, a girl about Sarah's age. The two little blondes quickly became inseparable. Being summer, the girls had little to do but get into trouble. Clowie's mother would smile tolerantly as the pair would clomp across the hardwood floors of the house or ferry in mud with their shoes after one of their numerous outdoor adventures. Sarah and Clowie would laugh, and occasionally cry, until the sun went down and Sarah returned to her home in the basement, promising to return the next day.

Inevitably, though, the con finished and finished successfully. Sarah found herself perched in the back seat of a dull-colored sedan as she drove away from the bright white house and the tall trees. This departure was different. There was no adrenaline pumping. The car was neatly packed. And Sarah was perched on her knees not facing forward, but with her stomach pressed against the cheap worn leather on the backrest of the back seat, watching Clowie out the rear window as she stood in the center of the street, waving goodbye to her friend.

"Will I ever see her again?" Sarah asked dolefully.

"I don't know, sweetie," her father said in a not-so-subtle tone that suggested he really did know. "What do you think?"

As Clowie shrunk in the distance, Sarah realized that she would never keep the promises she made to write and maybe come back to visit someday. She couldn't, not given the life that she and her father lived. Clowie would keep her promise to check her mailbox every day for a letter that would never come, until one day she would realize that her friend wasn't such a good friend after all.

There was no help for it. Some realities couldn't be changed, no matter how much she wished that she could. Things were the way they had to be, and there was nothing Sarah could do about it.

The best thing to do was to take her father's advice, to look ahead so there was no time to look back. She allowed herself one last sniffle before she turned around and sat down. "Where are we going next?" she asked through watery eyes and a forced smile. Her father shot her an approving look in the mirror.

Her father's approving eyes faded from her mind, replaced by Chuck's unforgiving ones. He finally broke their stalemate and shifted his gaze to the returned bracelet in his hand.

As Chuck roughly shoved the trinket into a pant pocket, Sarah realized that she had treated Chuck just like she had treated Clowie. Sarah had developed another relationship that her life wouldn't allow her to maintain. Relationships involved promises, promises of trust, promises of honesty, promises of caring as much about the other person's feelings as her own. Secret agents and ten-year-old girls didn't always have the power to keep their promises. The difference was that agents should know better.

All of that was bad enough. However, in Chuck's case, when she had tried to do what she always did by moving on to what was next, she had allowed herself the self-delusion that she was trying to do right by the team. What she had really done, almost by instinct, was to try to leave town without looking back, to move on to what was next so she could forget what she was leaving behind.

What she had instinctively done was to run away.

Her original intent had been to quickly rip the Band-aid off the wound she had caused by flirting with Cole, but she had gone too far. Cole had provided too much temptation of an easy out, a way for Sarah to emotionally move on to something safer, to somebody safer. Desperate to forget, she had done the equivalent of ripping the Band-aid off slowly and rubbing an entire tequila shooter, including every last bit of salt, liquor and lemon, into Chuck's still-open wound.

Guilt surged through her veins. Her mouth flopped uselessly as she searched for something to say, some words that would somehow make things right, but she strongly doubted those words existed.

Chuck didn't notice; he refused to look at her. He silently went through the identity verification routine to open the vault to the Castle. When the door finally opened, he went through it without a backwards glance, the same way that Sarah left when she was trying to leave something behind.

That was when the tears came.

She tried to stem the tide. It didn't really matter, she told herself. It was an impossible situation. Even when they eventually weren't asset and agent, she would be forced to move along to what was next, to leave town. She had only hastened the inevitable by moving on now. It didn't really matter if Chuck hated her.

That was when the tears flowed freely.

There was no help for it. Some realities couldn't be changed, no matter how much she wished that she could. Things were the way they had to be, and there was nothing Sarah could do about it.

But that didn't make it hurt any less.

* * *

An eternity later, at the top of the stairs, Sarah looked around the Castle. Casey was working at the front monitor bank. Chuck was ensconced at a desk towards back of the room.

Chuck glanced up at her with suddenly accusing eyes. They repeated, "Friends don't treat each other this way, do they." He went back to his notes before she dragged her eyes away.

His words echoed in Sarah's ears as she mindlessly descended into the Castle. The echo fed a dull roar of distraction that left her feeling strangely light-headed and bemused, a feeling of detachment that acted as a welcome anesthetic for the unpleasant emotions lingering in her chest.

She paused on the last step of the stairs, unable to stop herself from checking Chuck one last time. He was engrossed in his work, using the job as an escape, just like Sarah did. Apparently spy skills weren't the only things Chuck had picked up from his teammates; he had picked up some of the bad habits as well.

Unfortunately, Sarah didn't have the luxury of correcting bad habits, Chuck's or her own, at the moment. She had to get her head on straight before she did any more damage, before the anesthetic wore off and she truly started to hurt.

While she couldn't make things right between them, there had to be something she could do for him, something to make up for what she had done. The least she could do was find something to make him happier. Unfortunately, so much of what he wanted wasn't possible. A normal life, the safety of his friends and family, her heart … none of it was hers to offer. What could she give him?

"You got a moment, Agent Walker?" Casey asked sardonically.

Sarah snapped back to reality. She found herself clutching the banister with a death-like grip. "What was that?" she asked, confused.

Casey was right next to her. "Can you spare a moment," he asked, "or are you busy auditioning for a new job holding up the railing?"

She forced herself to unwind her fingers from the cold metal. "Of course," she answered.

He led her towards the main monitor bank at the front of the room. "Don't get me wrong; I think you're a good fit for the position, seeing how you're dumb as a post these days. Let me know if you need a recommendation."

"What do you want, Casey?" she snapped.

"We've got maps for tonight's mission. I want a second pair of eyes." He sat down in a chair facing a side monitor mounted on the lower console. He looked at her pointedly. "You do remember we have a mission tonight, don't you?"

She barely suppressed a blush. She had hardly given the mission a moment's thought all day. "Of course," she lied; she shrugged with what she hoped was nonchalance. Casey's grunt suggested she had missed the mark.

On the screen was more of an architectural schematic than a map, a collection of boxy graphical shapes that provided a bird's eye view of buildings, roads and sidewalks. The building at the center of the map was highlighted and labeled with the address from the card given to Cole by Finchman the previous night. She leaned over his shoulder, her left arm supporting a fair bit of her weight on the console.

They began with an analysis of the building exterior and the surrounding buildings. Casey occasionally tapped on the keyboard to change the perspective on the diagram. He highlighted key entry and exit points on the target building, adding notes about potential sniper posts and escape routes through the neighboring buildings. He was thorough, which meant that Sarah had only had to point out things that he missed twice. She was more than happy for the excuse to throw herself into some work, especially since there was little need for conversation.

Casey broke a long silence by dryly commenting, "Nice performance at the Buy More." His tone was low enough that Chuck wouldn't hear.

A thought occurred to her; Sarah looked up. The main bank of monitors still contained the feeds from the series of cameras covering the Buy More, the Orange Orange, and the intervening walk. She gratefully noted that the cameras outside the vault didn't appear on any of the monitors. "It did the job," she said, returning her eyes to the map.

"And Bartowski?"

Sarah sighed as if irritated with the question. "Let's just say you don't need to worry about the two of us getting too close any time soon." She couldn't be sure, but she thought she felt Casey's eyes pass over her naked wrist.

They moved on to analyze the target building. A few keystrokes highlighted the central building; the interior walls faded into view. The two began to examine the loading dock area. "What about you and Cole?" Casey asked.

"Nothing to worry about there."

"Hmph. You've told me that before."

"We kissed. That was the end of it. And since you watched the video, you already know that."

The corner of his mouth turned up the slightest bit. "Just checking. We need to be on our game tonight. These Idiom guys are nasty customers."

"Did we get any intel on them?"

"We found a little bit through the normal channels. Luckily, Bartowski flashed while he reviewed some video this morning. Finchman is actually Jeremy Carver, who has a veritable sash of merit badges for nasty behavior. Most notably, he killed two MI6 agents in a fairly nasty way about six months ago."

"Agent Barker's not going to like that."

"Hell, I don't like that. I know what I'd want to do in his shoes." Casey paused. "You realize you still need to be able to work with the guy."

"Barker?"

"Bartowski. You can walk away from Barker."

That was part of what had made Cole so appealing. "Obviously," she said.

"And that won't be a problem?"

"Nope."

Casey shot a meaningful glance at the obviously unhappy Chuck. "You sure about that?"

"Chuck can be professional."

The NSA agent sniggered as his eyes returned to the monitor. His fingers starting tapping again as he made note after note of key building features. "Frankly, it's not Bartowski I'm worried about. Bartowski hasn't been distracted by the fourth member of our team. Bartowski isn't the reason your cover is falling apart."

It suddenly occurred to Sarah that she might have something to give to Chuck. This was as good a time as any to test the waters. "That part shouldn't be a problem. Chuck wants to end the cover relationship anyway."

Casey's fingers stopped. He turned to glare at Sarah.

Apparently the waters were freezing cold.

"Bartowski!" he barked without looking away from Sarah. "I need an ordnance inventory."

"No problem," Chuck said in a deflated tone that belied his words. He flipped his pencil onto the briefing folders and headed towards the back. He was so busy trying not to look at Sarah that he didn't notice the mounting tension between the agents.

When they were alone, Casey said, "OK, James Blond, you're kidding me with this, right? Your little fling with Barker made the asset want to scuttle the cover again?!"

"Chuck wanted the cover to go away before we found Cole. He's tired of it, and I don't blame him."

"You think he's tired of his cover?! I bunker in an Echo Park apartment. I go days at a time without taking my piece out of its holster. It got so bad last week that I set off a bug bomb in my apartment just because I liked the idea that I was wreaking some kind of carnage. A significant part of my day is spent performing surveillance on people like Grimes and Barnes and Patel and, oh by the way, I work part time as a green shirt in a Buy More. Not exactly an agent's wet dream, is it? But I do it anyway. I do it because it's my assignment and because the security of the country depends on it, not because I enjoy it. Bartowski should understand that by now."

Bartowski's return saved Sarah from Casey's glare. They pulled back from their confrontation as he re-entered the room, like arguing parents who sensing the approach of their child.

"Casey, I'll get counts on the weapons and the ammunition. Did you…" Chuck slowed his approach, sensing something was amiss. A bit hesitantly, he added, "… did you want counts on the explosives as well?"

"Of course," Casey said in a downright pleasant tone. Sarah smiled as well.

The pleasantness, from both of them, only disconcerted Chuck further. Shooting nervous looks back at the agents, Chuck left the room to continue the inventory.

The two swung back to face each other; Sarah got her words out first. "This is what you wanted, Casey. You wanted distance between Chuck and me, and if there are short-term implications, we'll just have to deal with them."

"This isn't Bartowski's call, it isn't your call, and it isn't my call. It's Beckman's call, and if Chuck wants to stay out of the bunker, then the cover needs to stay. Period."

"There has to be another way."

"There is no other way, and you know that."

"There's always another way!"

The two agents locked gazes. Sarah might not be able to give Chuck much, but she was going to get this for him. He deserved it, not the least of which was because of the way she had treated him.

Casey's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Why are you so bent on fighting for this? Is it Barker?"

"No, Casey, it's not Barker."

"Then what is it?"

"The truth is … I'm tired of saying 'no' to Chuck."

"What, you're tired of him asking you out? Or you want to date the guy?"

Her expression said more than words ever could. It was a terrific performance on her part.

"Fine," he said. "What did you mean?"

"We dragged him into this world, and Chuck hardly asks for anything in return."

"Only two full-time agent bodyguards."

"Except that he's not just an asset, not any more. More and more he pulls his own weight. Chuck has done a far better job adapting to this life than we ever could have hoped. Be honest: when you met him, did you ever think it would work out so well?"

Casey chuckled humorlessly. "I thought he'd be dead inside a week, and he'd take us both with him."

"Yet here we are, however many successful missions later, and he just keeps getting better at his job. When does he see some reward for that?"

"Every day he doesn't go to a bunker."

"That's not fair and you know it," she said.

Casey actually thought about that for a moment. He grumbled, "Maybe the guy has earned something."

"Exactly. He doesn't ask to stop going on the missions. He sees the money the DNI tosses around, but he doesn't ask for a dime, despite how much he could use it. All he asks is that we change things so he no longer has to lie to his sister and his friends about me. Casey, he already lies to them enough. That's not an unfair request. Help me make this happen," she urged. "You know how much it would mean to him."

Casey stared at the blond woman's pleading eyes. He processed and assessed.

Out in the shadowy hall, Chuck eavesdropped with a great deal of interest. He listened not only because it involved his request to dispose of the cover story with Sarah, but also because, for the first time in days, the Sarah Walker he thought he knew wasn't just a figment of his imagination.

_

* * *

No beta-readers were harmed during the writing of this chapter, except possibly for __**MySoapBox**__, who provided some fantastic feedback on the first part. All mistakes are my own._


	11. Down to Business

_If you haven't already, please take the time to stop by the "TWoP Kicked Us Out" forum (under the Discussion Forums link at the top of the main Chuck fanfic page) and nominate your favorite stories and authors for recognition of the best writing. Please take the time to do this; it's a fantastic way to recognize the wonderful writers on this site. Thanks. _

* * *

The black sedan looked decidedly out of place as it slowly carried Cole and Sarah into the long, grimy alley. While the car was far less conspicuous than the Aston Martin, it still didn't manage to fit its current surroundings.

In fairness, the sedan had fit in much better out on the street, where the lighting was decent and at least the most rudimentary of efforts to keep the office fronts clean had been made. However, Finchman-cum-Carver had slipped out of the appointed address and asked Sarah and Cole to head around to the back. Never knew who was watching, he had said with a friendly smile. Couldn't be too careful.

Of course not. It would be far easier for Idiom to collect two bodies in a back alley should things head south. That was the risk of playing the game on the opposition's home turf.

Vegas bookies said home turf was worth three points to a football team. Then again, this type of game was never decided on points, and Vegas bookies were smart enough not to try to cut twelve million dollar deals in empty alleyways. Agents didn't always have the luxury of being smart.

Sarah squinted, trying to coax her eyes into seeing even a little more clearly. A cloudy night sky reflected the city lights and painted the alleyway with dull smearings of charcoal and onyx and all shades of black in between. Even the metallic surfaces, downspouts and fire escapes and security doors, were coated with layers of rust and peeling paint that seemed eager to absorb what little light was to be found.

A pair of feeble security lights temporarily brightened their way. The reflection of the lights swam across the curves of the car's shiny finish like luminescent fish deep in the ocean, indistinct shapes that appeared and disappeared before the eye could truly fix on them, leaving one feeling unsure of whether he is truly alone.

The entire neighborhood was empty to the point of being disconcerting. The sight of some car passing in the distance or even the occasional pile of trash for pick-up would have provided some comfort that normal people conducted normal business here. Instead, nothing slowed their progress but the caution a good agent exercised when venturing into hostile territory.

"All clear so far," she said into her radio.

"Roger that," Casey replied.

Down the alley the car crept. Cole slipped her a comforting smile. Although Sarah Walker rarely needed comforting while on a mission, the confidence and competence of her partner still raised her spirits. She returned to her role as sentry.

The meeting location was a single-story office facility halfway down the block, a tomb for a computer parts supply company that hadn't survived the fallout when interest in custom built computers flagged in the wake of the dot com bust. Major industry players like Dell and HP figured out how to meet what demand for customization remained, effectively shuttering the smaller companies that couldn't land deals with the giants. Given the lack of interest in that space, or in much of the space on the block, it was hard to say whether Idiom had used the space before. Idiom could simply borrow the office whenever they wanted; nobody would ever have noticed.

Up ahead, the alley opened to the left, exposing the three-bay loading dock for the rundown office space. A trio of mercury lights made the dock area an oasis of light exposing the poorly maintained details of the area. The walls to the sides of the docks were dingy enough to obscure all but the faintest of maroon, brown, and deep blue colorings in the bricks, and the garage door on bay one clearly was in no condition to open.

Across from the bays was what looked to be another office building with a decidedly unsafe-looking fire escape providing faint hope to anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped on the second or third floors. The lack of lights in the windows suggested what their reconnaissance had already told them: the building was abandoned. The alley continued for another long block past the opening, bereft of anything other than a pair of lidded rectangular trash bins three buildings down.

"Lots of potential hiding places for snipers," she noted, scanning the many windows that would provide a decent angle on the loading area.

"Now that wouldn't exactly be fighting fair, would it?"

"What, did MI6 secure a copy of a rulebook that we Americans don't know about?"

"There's only one rule," he said, suddenly deadly serious. "Country first. Anything else is gravy."

That was certainly a rule Sarah could appreciate.

The car slid through the mouth of the loading bay area, coming to rest pointing inwards at a slight angle. A regular door between bays two and three opened. Four men, Carver and Bollea among them, came out of the door and descended the short set of concrete stairs.

As Sarah and Cole exited their car, she examined the three men crossing the cracked concrete. The two unknown men wore sports coats and slacks; they spread out to the sides to make the group more difficult to attack. Carver wore a tweed jacket over a white shirt and a pair of jeans. Bollea, on the other hand, wore yellow pants with flared cuffs and an atrocious white, maroon and yellow shirt unbuttoned to the sternum to expose a thin gold chain. He folded his arms, his pecs flexing, as if daring one of Cole and Sarah to make a comment. Frankly, his attire, while disturbing, was the least of Sarah's concerns.

The six stood silently, assessing each other carefully. The moment stretched a bit too long. The tension caused one of the nameless men to shift from one foot to the other.

She decided to break the stalemate. With her English accent in place, she asked, "Do you have the report?"

"Do you have the money?" Carver countered.

"'We' do not," Cole said. "However, a friend has the money nearby."

Carver shared a knowing glance and a chuckle with his men. "So, what, I'm supposed to just hand you the report and take your word that the money will appear?"

"And did you really think we would hand you the money without examining the report first? We see the report, verify that it's the real deal, and then you get your money."

"Or, you get to skim to the part you want to see and declare it to be a fake. You get the information you want for free."

Sarah shook her head impatiently. "You can stand behind us to verify that we're not doing that. But we're not putting any money in your hands until we see the report."

Carver thought it over, and then pursed his lips in grudging acceptance. "Fine. But we'll do that inside."

None of how the scene played out was unexpected. It was all part of the game, a way to give the other side the opportunity to make a mistake. Nobody did; everything worked the way it had to work when a trade was arranged and trust was in short supply. Still, by no means were they out of the woods. In fact, things were about to get more dangerous.

With a nod of acceptance from Sarah and Cole, the group headed back for the loading dock door. Bollea's wide back shielded a keypad where he punched in a six-number code. The locking mechanism in the door disengaged with a loud click and a buzz.

Bollea opened the door, inviting Cole and Sarah deeper into the spider's web with a nonchalant wave of the arm.

The group passed through what clearly once was a shipping area. A surprising amount of equipment had been left when the company folded: hand trucks, stacks of cardboard boxes, and work tables were just a few of the many things that now served no purpose but to capture dust. There was clearly plenty of dust to be caught.

As they ventured deeper into the building, the space transitioned largely into open rooms, many of which were still built out into cubes or at least still had the various pieces of the cube walls in them. Off to the sides were rooms with various uses: offices, conference rooms, work areas and kitchens among them.

The layout was a bit of a maze; it took several turns to wend their way towards the front of the space. Sarah tracked their progress on her memory of the layout as Carver led them into what probably had been the best office in the building. Time had not been kind; now the only things distinctive about the room were the large size, the lighter rectangles on the walls where pictures had once hung and a beaten-up folding table with a laptop computer.

Cole and Sarah walked over towards the computer, waiting patiently as Carver manipulated the keyboard and opened a file. A reader program appeared on the screen, displaying the cover page of the report.

Beckman had given Sarah a number of things to look for to verify the report's authenticity. There was the number of pages in the document, a code at the bottom of the second page, a revision marker in a grid in the preamble, and the first two lines of the seventh chapter. Everything checked out.

She gave Cole a nod. He picked up his phone and dialed a number. "Life is good," he said. "Use the back door."

* * *

The Crown Vic took its turn cruising down the alley. Casey didn't proceed as cautiously as Cole had; the money was coming into the building, so nobody had reason to slow him down.

The docking bay was empty except for the sedan. The Crown Vic slipped in at an opposite diagonal, nose pointed out in case a quick escape was needed. Casey slipped the gear shift into park and removed the single key from the ignition. He held the key in the air and stared at Chuck as if his life depended on it. "You're not going to do anything to my car, right?"

"Barring the need to immediately re-program GPS guided missiles, no, Casey, I'm not going to do anything to your car."

Casey grunted like he wasn't convinced, but he handed the key to Chuck anyway. He then pulled out a hand-held radio. "We have two radios to contact MI6; Walker has one, and this is the other. If things go south, call in the cavalry. No messing around."

"Got it," Chuck said, taking the radio. The team had discussed the protocol for contacting the MI6 team in the briefing. Twelve of MI6's best were less than three blocks away, eagerly awaiting the chance to take down Carver. They didn't take kindly to traitors; Chuck couldn't blame them. "Are you sure I can't do anything else?"

"Get low and stay there. This will either be easy or ugly; either way, you won't be able to help."

Chuck sighed. "Stay in the car, Chuck. Got it."

Casey didn't have time for hand-holding. He grabbed the metal briefcase from the back seat and exited the car. Chuck slumped down, partly to hide, partly to mope.

Casey crossed the pavement and pounded on the door. After ten seconds or so, the door swung open. Bollea appeared, wearing his flowing shirt and yellow pants.

"Wow. Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?" Casey said by way of greeting.

Bollea grunted, but otherwise let the comment roll off his back. He shifted to the side so Casey could enter.

Casey walked inside and stood in front of the huge man. He took a long deliberate look at the ridiculous outfit. "Seriously, you got a 70's throwback party to go to later?"

"Yeah," Bollea said, clearly insulted. He checked out Casey's conservative black suit. "Maybe you can give me a ride in your hearse."

"Only if you want to ride in the back," Casey said pleasantly.

The pair assessed each other for a moment. Both seemed to be deciding whether each could take the other in a fight. Each seemed to like his chances. Eventually, Bollea raised an arm and Casey started walking.

Bollea trailed Casey as they crossed the complex to the office. Two other henchmen lingered near the office door. Through the doorway, Casey could see Sarah and Cole leaning down, examining the document on the computer.

Too late, Sarah looked up at him from beyond Cole with the slightest hint of an apology in her face. He now recognized they were leaning on the table because somebody had told them to keep their hands there.

Things had gone the ugly route.

Casey grabbed the briefcase with both hands and tried to swing it back at Bollea's face, but the man caught his lead arm at the elbow, stunting the blow. The butt of his pistol caught Casey on the base of his skull, knocking the briefcase to the ground and the agent to a knee as Bollea flipped the gun around to trained it on the back of his head.

"Cheap shot," Casey muttered as he raised his hands, one running over the site of the wound.

"What do you call the crack about Barry Manilow's wardrobe?" Bollea asked.

"An honest question."

"Enough," Carver said, emerging from the back of the office, his gun drawn. The other two henchmen had moved into position behind Cole and Sarah, ensuring they couldn't try anything either.

"I thought we had a deal, Finchman," Cole said angrily.

"You must not have read the fine print. All deals are null and void when it turns out that the purchasers are CIA. Isn't that right, Agent Walker?"

He pointed the gun at her to emphasize his words. Sarah stiffened slightly.

"Agent Casey," Finchman continued, again pointing the gun. Casey snarled.

Finchman turned to Cole. "And that would make you Agent Carmichael."

The three agents exchanged subtle glances. They weren't entirely certain whether Carver's mistake could be used to their advantage, but the fact that somebody had tipped off Carver about the identities of the members of the team didn't bode well.

"Get out of here, Chuck," Casey muttered under his breath.

* * *

From his slumped position in the front seat of the Vic, Chuck strained to listen to the action inside. It suddenly occurred to him that his earpiece had been very quiet ever since Casey had gone inside and finished trading insults with Bollea, about a minute back. Why weren't Sarah, Cole and Carver talking?

Suddenly, Chuck heard sounds of scuffling and an angry grunt from Casey. Chuck let out a tension-filled exhalation when Carver started identifying the agents.

He fumbled for the radio. It was time to call in reinforcements.

As he lifted the radio to his mouth, he hesitated. If he called in MI6, he might be signing the death warrants for Casey, Cole and Sarah. The three would be caught in the crossfire. Casey's joke about the hearse suddenly seemed far less amusing than it had.

No, he admonished himself. You have to call in the MI6 team. It's their best chance. It's their only chance.

"Grey Goose, Grey Goose, this is Dark Canyon. Do you copy?" He heard the fear and desperation in his voice. He hoped that nobody noticed.

* * *

"Don't worry," Casey whispered to Walker as the three were led towards the front of the office space. "Bartowski should be calling in help right about now."

Walker looked up at him and again sadly shook her head.

"What?" he asked.

"Bollea rigged the radio. He duct-taped the transmit button down and took it somewhere. The radio's effectively been jammed."

"You're kidding," Casey said, a little too loudly.

Another rap to the head from Bollea was his reward. "No talking," he ordered.

Casey grimaced. It was all he could do to control himself from going after Bollea right then and there. He forced himself to stay calm, shaking off the blow. "Oh-oh-oh, this just keeps getting better and better."

* * *

"Grey Goose, Grey Goose, this is Dark Canyon. Do you copy?!" Chuck asked plaintively. It was the fifth time he'd tried to make contact.

There was no response.

He found himself taking back his earlier words. Right now, he would be excruciatingly happy for an MI6 agent to hear the fear and desperation in his voice.


	12. Backup Plan

_Once again, I find myself needing to apologize for a delay. Real-life has been a bear lately._

_This time around, I waited to publish until my next couple of chapters are pretty much done. I had planned to publish them over a few days, but I'll be going out of town this weekend._

_So ... I'm posting one chapter today and I'll post two more tomorrow. Enjoy!  
_

* * *

Two Idiom henchmen exited the building into the loading dock area, guns and flashlights casually hanging to their sides. They descended the stairs and strode purposefully towards the two cars, the echoes of their footsteps fading into silence as they stopped about fifteen feet away.

They readied lights and guns. One of the men nodded to the other. The two exploded into motion; each took quick steps towards the black sedan, pointing muzzles and lights through front windows.

Nothing.

The men again assumed attacking positions, this time near the Crown Vic. Again, a silent nod was all the communication they needed. With another flurry of steps, the two closed.

Nothing.

The two side-stepped out into the alleyway, flashlights blazing and guns only a twitch of a finger away from blazing.

There was nothing.

One of the men slipped his gun into the holster under his suit jacket. He flicked off his flashlight and pulled out a radio. "All clear," he reported.

"OK, get back inside," Bollea replied. "Our customers are here, and I want everyone in position."

The radio disappeared into a pocket as the two headed back for the building. "Knew it," the man said smugly. "The CIA is too cocky to have a back-up plan."

"Can't be too careful, though."

"True."

The two men climbed the steps to the door. The first punched six numbers into a panel by the door; a noisy click reverberated through the silent alley as the lock disengaged. The second man pulled the door open, and the pair disappeared inside.

A minute passed, then two. A rustling came from the side of the Crown Vic furthest from the building. The back-up plan rolled out from under the car, stomach onto back onto stomach onto back, staring at the sky as he thanked nobody in particular that the men hadn't been more thorough. The stress dripped from Chuck's voice as he said, "It's never safe in the car."

There would be time for stress later. He couldn't seem to contact the MI6 team, and Beckman wasn't picking up, either. He had his orders and they were clear – in this situation, he was supposed to escape, period.

But Casey, Sarah and Cole needed his help. He couldn't leave them. He wouldn't leave them.

To help them, Chuck needed a weapon, and he knew where to find one … or more likely, a couple dozen. Casey didn't go on missions without a generous reserve of firepower.

Chuck flipped over and crawled across the ground, making his way around to the trunk while staying behind the car as best he could, nervous that the men might return. He reached up and inserted the key Casey had left him.

The key wouldn't turn. Chuck grimaced.

He risked getting to his knees in case the lock was just being temperamental, but he knew that was just wishful thinking. Everything about the car was in spit-and-polish shape. The only thing temperamental about the car was its owner.

Still, there was more than one way to get to the weapon cache. Chuck crawled back to the passenger's door, intending to open the trunk from the glove box. There might even be a gun in the compartment.

The problem was that the glove box was locked, too.

Apparently Casey had installed different locks for both the trunk and the glove box. Somehow it seemed fitting that Casey would leave Chuck a way to run but no way to help. He took a deep breath.

Unarmed, uncertain of what he could do but unwilling to abandon his teammates, Chuck sprinted through the harsh glare of the security lights and bounded up the steps to the door. The first obstacle that he faced was the code panel for the locked door.

He stared at the panel, hoping against hope that he could trigger some kind of flash. He squinted. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He searched for a serial number or some other marking that would cause the familiar rush of information. No such luck.

However, he did notice something else. The rubber buttons were badly worn in places. He ran his fingers across the buttons, musing over what he might discern.

The 8 key, in particular, had taken a serious beating during its lifetime. In fact, the discolorations and cracking of the buttons practically shouted that the code used the numbers 2, 7, 8, and 9, with the 8 definitely being repeated. If the code hadn't been changed.

He knew the code was six digits; the beeps as his would-be discoverers re-entered the building told him that. He did the math in his head. If the code was six digits and the 8 was the only repeat, there were one hundred and twenty possible codes to pound through.

It was worth a shot.

* * *

"You have all three?" the raven-haired woman asked. She seemed oblivious to the belligerent stares that her team was exchanging with Carver's men.

Carver guided her to a nearby windowed conference room. A long table was centered in the narrow room extending away from them. Three rolling desk chairs to the right side of the table held the three bound agents. "As promised," he replied, a bit impatiently. He was eager to have the transaction complete. The money would be fantastic, better than any other three operations he'd run put together and a nice consolation prize to needing to abandon his embassy post. However, with the increased reward came increased risk. One didn't deal with these people lightly.

She looked impressed as she scanned the agents. "You managed to accomplish what we failed to do multiple times. Well done. You've earned your money tonight."

Her smile grew, tiny white teeth gleaming ferally in the bright office lights. Carver once again wondered what the agents had done to get on the bad side of these people.

His contact had asked Carver about the new interest in the report, and he had supplied still shots from surveillance footage. She hadn't even tried to conceal her excitement; she promptly offered to double her previous offer for the report if Carver and his men managed to capture the agents. He was happy to oblige; after all, he was getting paid extraordinarily well to capture agents who were onto him, and disposing of them would become somebody else's problem.

Despite his nervousness, Carver couldn't control his curiosity. "What's so important about these agents?"

Her face and her tone went flat. "I believe 'no questions asked' was a very specific part of our deal."

"Sorry," he said with a thin smile. "Habit of the trade. Always looking for information."

"In this case, I think you'll find questions could quickly become a very unhealthy habit."

"Point taken. So, what first? The report or the agents?"

"We check the merchandise, of course."

Carver started heading back to the office with the computer before he noticed that she had turned back to one of her men. The man set a large case on a nearby table and opened it; she quickly checked that everything was in order. Carver caught a glimpse of needles, vials, and other devices that would have fit far better in a horror movie than in the abandoned office space. She smirked as she lovingly examined a wicked looking set of pliers with barbed teeth.

She caught him staring at her. "After all, I do need to make sure we have the right agents. You might be pulling a fast one." Her tone left little doubt how ugly things would get if she were in any way disappointed.

He felt a bead of sweat form on his brow. Yes, he would be much happier when he was as far away from Fulcrum as possible.

* * *

The fluorescent lights of the conference room beat down on Casey, Cole and Sarah with an annoying, incessant buzzing that made the minutes seem to pass too slowly and too quickly at the same time. Each of the trio was tightly bound to a beaten-down rolling desk chair facing the same side of a long dark wooden table discolored by water marks and neglect.

None of the agents bothered with more than a quick testing their bindings. The best in their business could bind a person to afford no easy chance at escape, and Bollea clearly fell into that category. More importantly, their captors were watching through the window. They needed to conserve their strength.

Cole stole a glance at the spectators. "So who do you figure the new blokes are?"

"My guess?" Sarah asked. "Fulcrum."

"Fulcrum?!" He looked at Casey. "She's joking, right?"

"Makes too much sense," he said. "Idiom has no reason to keep us alive, and Fulcrum is the only group that would want us alive so they could get certain pieces of information from us."

Cole looked back to Sarah, still obviously unable to process the idea. "I thought they were just a rumor that got out of control."

"Trust us," she said. "Fulcrum is very real, and probably worse than you've heard."

"This is turning into some kind of bad dream."

"Want me to come over there and pinch you?" Casey offered.

"Sure. Would you mind untying me when you do?" Cole turned to Sarah. "Is he always this pleasant to work with?"

"No. Usually he's much worse."

"Well, at least we still have an ace in the hole."

"What's that?"

"Carmichael. They don't know about him, or else he'd be in here with us."

As usual, Casey was not one to hold back an opinion. "You've been around the team for a couple of days now. Do you really think that Carmichael is capable of saving the day?"

"He certainly won't be if you never give him the chance."

Sarah averted her eyes. The last thing she wanted was for Chuck to come charging in alone against ten armed men, half of them Fulcrum.

She couldn't deny that it hurt and hurt badly to think about what Chuck's last memories of her could be. Her spy instincts were flawless, but Chuck only had one foot in the spy world. There was little doubt that she had mishandled things with Chuck time and again, partially to protect Chuck and partially to protect herself. She shook her head.

Hopefully something good would come from her mistakes. Hopefully Chuck would be disgusted enough with her recent behavior to stay safely away.

The door opened. Sarah was jarred from her thoughts as the brunette woman they had seen through the window entered the room. "Agents Walker, Casey, and Carmichael. We meet at last," she said with a smug little smile. She closed the door behind her and walked behind Casey around the far end of the table so she was facing the three agents. After setting her case down, she rifled through its contents and began to set up shop. A few choice torture implements clattered to the side of the case in a move obviously designed to get the trio thinking about what was coming.

It worked, but probably not in the way the woman had hoped. As the woman continued to lay out the tools of her trade, Sarah mentally prepared herself. Following her training, she created a safe place for her thoughts, a haven to distance herself from the current situation. This time, she chose images of Chuck safely away, smiling among Ellie and Morgan and the others in his life who could treat him far better than she had.

* * *

Chuck punched in another six-number sequence: 788289.

Buzz.

Again, no luck.

He rubbed a hand across his face. What if he was wrong?

Using a methodical approach, he was slowly working his way through the combinations. He would pick an order for the digits '2', '7' and '9', starting with the digits all the way to the left, such as 279888. Then he would shift through the combinations keeping the '279' in relative order until he finished with 888279.

He had already entered eighty-plus codes, twenty each keeping the numbers 279, 297, 729 and 792 ordered. Now he was midway through the 927's. But he hadn't found it yet, and what if he was wrong? Should he be doing something else?

There was no time for doubt. The best thing to do was to keep working.

988827.

Buzz.

He slipped the '9' over one place and moved the '27' back.

892788.

Buzz.

He groaned. 892878.

Click.

A gasp of excitement and disbelief escaped his lips. He almost forgot to grab the door and pull it open before the latch locked again.

He ducked inside and quietly guided the door back into place, and then turned around to examine the room half-filled by leftover pallets and unassembled boxes and work surfaces. He carefully listened for a long moment; nothing disturbed the silence.

He was in. Now what?


	13. Rubber Bands and Paper Clips

_Slight change of plans. I'm going to post this chapter tonight; I'll post the next chapter on Wednesday or Thursday when I get back home, unless I get a chance to work on the road._ _Got a kink to work out._

_Nope ... still don't own Chuck._

* * *

Chuck cobbled together a plan. It wasn't much of a plan, he had to admit, but it would give them a chance.

He wasn't sure of the numbers he was up against, but that was somewhat irrelevant, as even one opponent should be enough to take him down. His objective was to find his teammates and set them free. At that point, they would either be fleeing the building or taking their opponents down with hand-to-hand combat – as Chuck watched from a discreet distance, of course. The best way for him to help was to do what he could to prepare for either contingency.

From the briefing earlier that day, he knew the office space was something of a maze, with plenty of turns and blind corners. This knowledge, combined with the lack of people in his immediate area, allowed him to scrounge through the packing supplies in the loading dock area and some office supplies he found in a nearby supply room without too much worry.

He knew time was slipping away, but if they were going to manage against a number of enemy agents armed with guns, the team was going to need a more level playing field.

* * *

The door was closed. The blinds to the outer office were shut. Cole's chair had been wheeled around to a more convenient location on the other side of the table, facing the wall away from his teammates and close to the torture implements. His shirt and coat had been pulled behind his body, leaving him bare-chested and exposed for whatever was planned.

The dark-haired woman filled a syringe with a deceptively innocuous-looking clear liquid, casually chatting as if the three agents were merely clients in some dentist's office. "Our intelligence on the three of you isn't as detailed as we'd like, but we do know a few things. For example, our files suggest Agents Walker and Casey are known for their ability to resist interrogation techniques."

"Does my file mention my tendency to rip the arms off of Fulcrum agents and beat them over their own heads?" Casey asked.

"However," the woman continued, ignoring Casey, "Agent Carmichael here, by all accounts, should crack like a rotten coconut."

"I might surprise you," Cole said quietly.

"It's possible," she said. "I do adore a challenge. But do you really think playing a Brit is going to help you resist? Adopting an alternate identity a tired technique that, just between you and me, I've broken through so many times that it's begun to bore me. Tricks like that–"

"I don't need any tricks to beat you."

She paused. "I think you'll find that it's in your best interest not to interrupt me when I'm speaking."

"And I think you'll find that it's in your best interest to turn around and walk out of here while you still can." Cole looked her dead in the eye to drive home his seriousness.

She studied him for a moment before laughing a genuine deep-throated laugh. "Oh, Agent Carmichael," she said, drawing herself up in a kind of cruel anticipation, "I think I'm going to enjoy breaking you."

She went back to the end of the table. After setting down the syringe, she selected a polished, dark wooden dowel about ten inches long and an inch in diameter. It was a puzzling choice, the least intimidating item from her little buffet of torture options. She swung it almost carelessly a couple of times as she walked across the room and took a position in front of Cole, staring at it with a fond little smile before turning her eyes back to him.

Cole stared back at her with an almost amused grin. The grin vanished as the piece of wood blurred through the air.

Thwack!

His body jerked to the side in response to the blow to his left kidney.

Thump!

His body spasmed in reaction to the shot to the midsection.

Crack!

He cried out slightly as the club slammed into the side of his right knee, setting the chair slowly spinning until his legs, bound at the feet to the chair base, reached their limits. Angry with himself, he shook off the pain.

She observed his reactions carefully, clinically, clearly a bit puzzled. "It seems our intelligence might be wrong," she murmured. The puzzlement faded, relishing that this would be no simple interrogation. Her smile returned as she cocked the club again.

Thwack!

Thump!

Crack!

The same sequence of blows landed, only a little harder and with a little less delay between them. Cole's breathing became slightly more labored, but this time he avoided crying out. He stared balefully back at her. "You really think this is going to get me to talk?"

She paced around his chair, still assessing. "I really don't know. I may end up having to dig deeper into my bag of tricks before all is said and done." From behind him, she leaned down to his left ear and whispered, "First, though, I always like to try to break people the old-fashioned way."

Thwack!

The surprise blow to the jaw was powerful enough to knock his head to one side. He grimaced, keeping his head where it was, before he spit out some blood with a little added force. After straightening his neck and again shrugging aside the pain, he managed a small smile. "Aren't you supposed to be asking me questions? Seems like a bit of a rookie mistake."

She stopped in front of him, giving him a direct look full of disappointment that he still didn't understand. "Oh, no," she replied ominously. "When you're ready to talk … you'll tell me."

* * *

Chuck double-checked his stash of items before zipping up the bag. He hadn't had a ton of luck finding anything useful amidst what little remained of the abandoned packing and office supplies, but hopefully he had found enough to make the difference.

He once again debated carrying the bag in one hand, but finally succumbed to reality: he needed his hands free, so he would need to wear the bright pink fanny pack. He was pretty sure James Bond or any other spy worth his salt wouldn't be caught dead wearing a fanny pack. But if his time on missions had shown anything, it was that he was no James Bond, and pretending otherwise only brought trouble. Grumbling, he strapped the pack into place. With a deep breath, he started heading towards the front of the space.

A linoleum tile floor about six feet wide ran along the zig-zag of walls surrounding the central space. It was difficult to walk on the surface without the footsteps being obvious to anyone in the area, but the only other option was using the carpeted but entirely straight walkways down the centers of the cube assemblies, often leading into open spaces with little to no cover at all.

So, Chuck would peek around a corner, carefully slip around it and quickly make his way to a concealed spot, be it a dark doorway for a room off the central area or a path between cubes. He would wait a long moment as he scanned the oddly oppressive silence for any indication that he had been heard or a sentry was approaching. Once satisfied, he would proceed to the next corner.

He tried not to think about how ridiculous he must look, a tall gangly man wearing a bright pink fanny pack tip-toeing exaggeratedly across the linoleum. Still, he preferred looking ridiculous and staying alive to wearing a nice dapper suit in a coffin.

Three corners later, his ears picked up the sound of two men, the same men who came to check the cars, quietly talking. After determining the men's location, he stole up to the next corner, emboldened by the casual tone of their voices. They were camped out towards the middle of the next space watching the central walkway, hardly taking their responsibilities too seriously. Despite their inattention, Chuck decided that he couldn't get past them without being noticed.

That was where his "gun" came in. He had used a design he had perfected at the Buy More using four small binder clips, two large clips and a rubber band. The two large clips held each other and the plastic pieces of the four dismantled smaller clips in their grips, pinching the smaller clips together and creating a barrel for the gun. The rubber band went around the outside of the large clips, creating a neat little sling shot. The ammunition was a set of large paper clips that he had hastily straightened.

Chuck didn't have any delusions about taking anyone out with the gun. However, he hoped it could prove to distract. He pulled the gun and a piece of ammunition from his shirt pocket and inserted the strip of metal into the barrel.

A horizontal hallway bisecting sections of cubes provided a convenient access to cut across the floor to a dark room on the opposite side. Crouching down in the passage, he took aim and fired.

The rubber band launched the thin piece of metal with a disconcertingly loud snap. Chuck winced. The projectile flew through the doorway, making a tinny little sound as it bounced across the floor of the dark room. Something, an empty metal drum or trash can, stopped the projectile with a satisfying clang.

The conversation ceased. "Did you hear that?" One of them said.

"I sure did," the other said.

Chuck held his breath. Hopefully the two had been too distracted by their conversation to pinpoint the origin of the missile and would focus on the sounds in the room.

Into a radio, the first man said, "Bollea, this is Thomas. We heard a suspicious noise; we're going to investigate."

"Anything we should worry about?"

"Probably just a mouse or something, but you never know."

"OK. Report back every three minutes until you return to your post."

Chuck had taken the opportunity to slide out of the crossway and took cover behind a cube wall. He cocked an ear to listen carefully as the men walked the center hall and checked their surroundings before turning and heading for the dark room. When he heard them flip on the lights across the way, he let out a slow sigh of relief. He skittered along the walkway on all fours as quietly as he could, fanny pack high in the air, and passed the formerly guarded space along the outer wall.

* * *

The door to the conference room opened just as the brunette woman delivered a blow to Cole's stomach. She looked up to find her lieutenant standing in the doorway, an apologetic expression on his face.

"What?!" she demanded, her voice betraying her exasperation.

"Should we go examine the report while you are … finishing up in here?" he asked delicately.

"Yes, do that, but watch Carver and Bollea closely. They'd betray us in a New York minute if they thought they could make an extra buck."

He nodded his assent and began to close the door.

"Oh, and one other thing."

He stopped. "What's that?"

"Make sure we're not disturbed again, or I'm going to string you up like a piñata, put on a blindfold and beat you until we find out what comes spilling out of you," she said sweetly.

Despite his various aches and pains, a hunched-over Cole smiled to himself. She was frustrated.

* * *

Chuck stood frozen along a wall. Somebody, or several somebodies, stood silently around the next corner. The scent of freshly lit cigarettes and the sound of two men exhaling their smoke were the only things to stop him from blundering right into the midst. Now that he knew they were there, he wondered why the men were so quiet. Either these men were more professional than the two he had fooled, or there was reason for tension.

He also wondered how he was going to find Casey, Sarah and Cole. He was deep into enemy territory, and he didn't really have any idea where his friends were being held.

A somewhat stifled scream was further muffled as a door shut somewhere along the near wall. Chuck's face turned white; he suddenly felt a little queasy. That answered that question.

"Is she about done?" somebody far too close to him demanded. "Torture wasn't part of our arrangement. You didn't say anything about torture."

"What did you think we were going to do with the agents? Buy them dinner?"

A short pause followed. "We've held up our end of the bargain. It's time to complete our deal."

"Agreed. Let's go take a look at the report."

"OK. This way."

Chuck was startled at the number of footsteps he heard. Since they were heading across the office, he risked a look around the corner. He caught a brief glimpse of Bollea, Carver, and four other men before ducking down behind the safety of more cube walls. Chuck tracked their progress; the group walked along the far wall to an office one hundred feet back from where Chuck had come.

It wasn't perfect, as there was clearly somebody in the room working over his teammates, but Chuck wasn't going to have a better chance. Assuming that there was only one enemy in the room, there were still at least nine bad guys floating around, so having only to go against one seemed like the best odds he was going to get.

After all, he still had his gun, he thought a bit ruefully.

A quick peek around the corner ensured the coast was clear. He stayed low as he ran across the floor. Every movement seemed painfully loud as he scuttled over to the conference room, locating it by the murmur of an angry female voice within.

The door in the center of the back of the room was solid wood without any convenient cracks for spying, but the blinds in the window had not been put all the way down. He rose up so he could see what was going on. He dearly wished he hadn't.

Sarah and Casey were bound to chairs with lengths of white rope on the near side of a long table, forced to watch helplessly as a dark-haired woman, obviously angry, took a huge swing and buried a wooden dowel into Cole's ribs. This close, Chuck could make out the sound of impact and Cole's pained yelp despite the intervening glass and walls. He could see the welts and the blood and the bruises.

He turned and closed his eyes for a second, sliding down to the ground with his back against the wall and allowing himself a brief escape. He forced himself back to his knees to watch again. The woman prowled around the chair, shouting threats and obscenities at the agent. Cole turned his head, revealing a bruised jaw and a red trickle from the corner of a tired smile.

Chuck shook his head admiringly. The man was amazing.

Cole was handling the rough end of things, absorbing the torture and distracting the woman. If he could handle that, surely Chuck could handle a simple thing like sneaking into a room and setting Sarah and Casey free. He spun his pack around his waist and quickly found what he would need.

A series of cries from the room shook his resolve. He swallowed hard. His plan was simple enough that even he should be able to pull it off, but each sound he heard reminded him of the dire consequences of failure.

If he failed, he had little doubt that it would quickly be his turn in that chair - and nobody would be coming to save him.


	14. Not So Simple

_Back on the horse after a vacation..._

* * *

Chuck had a little experience trying to sneak unnoticed into rooms. Back at Stanford, he had taken a literature class his junior year to satisfy one of his core graduation requirements. Unfortunately, he had drawn the section in the 8:00 slot on Mondays and Wednesdays, so frequently a late night of studying or fraternity events or time spent with Jill left him standing outside the classroom, bleary-eyed from a lack of sleep, five to fifteen minutes after class had started.

This was a little different. Being caught here held harsher consequences than a glare from a perturbed professor.

Pulling the door slightly towards him to reduce the chance of the latch scraping, he rotated the knob carefully counterclockwise, being sure to turn it until he could turn it no more. The latch could catch on the jamb if he didn't, as he had once found out the hard way. He silently thanked Professor Hathaway and pushed the door slightly open.

The first thing he saw was Sarah, fiddling with the bonds securing her hands behind her seat. A small trickle of blood ran down her right wrist, her only reward for her efforts.

She turned to look at Casey and instead noticed the cracked door. Her eyes widened.

Chuck was startled by the range of naked emotions that paraded across her face. Anger, happiness, disbelief and relief all finally blended into something vaguely resembling pride. He wasn't sure what it all meant. It would need to wait.

He was about to make his move when Sarah's eyes shot him a warning. He stopped, realizing that she wanted him to wait. He crouched down and took a quick glimpse behind him. All was clear, so he turned back, patiently awaiting her signal.

A terse nod from Sarah finally indicated an opening. Chuck quickly slipped inside the room, terrified at how close the back of the female torturer was. He managed to close the door silently. _It's just Professor Hathaway, it's just Professor Hathaway_, he tried to convince himself. Unfortunately, he wasn't that gullible, especially when he spun just as she cocked her club to the side and slammed it into Cole's rib cage. The agent's breath came in violent wheezes.

Chuck froze at the viciousness of the attack; he quickly snapped himself out of it. Somehow he managed to slip under the table near Casey without being noticed. A wooden divider descended from the center of the table to the ground, giving Chuck the illusion of safety from the woman.

Casey shot his own look between his knees at Chuck. _Now, what, idiot?_ he seemed to ask. Chuck produced a box cutter, and a barely tamed excitement lit up Casey's eyes.

The blade hovered over Casey's feet as Chuck waited for the next attack and its corresponding concealing noises. He didn't need to wait long. As Cole cried out in pain and panted for breath in the aftermath, Chuck sliced hard and severed the ties holding one of Casey's feet to the chair's wheeled base. Another whack from the club and Casey's other foot was loose. He was just starting to figure out how he was going to set Casey's hands free when the woman spiked the dowel off the table, nearly startling Chuck enough to get him to bang his head on the underside of the table. The dowel bounced twice more on the wood before landing on the floor over by the window.

"Mr. Carmichael," she said in a frustrated voice as her slow footsteps carried her back towards her other equipment. Chuck heard what sounded like the scraping of plastic on the wood table. "I sincerely wish I had the time to break you properly, but time is running short. So, we'll need to try something different. In this syringe is a special little cocktail that I whipped up myself. I don't know exactly how potent it is, but it should cause an extraordinarily painful death in somewhere between, say, twenty seconds and twenty minutes, depending on how much I give you. Now I'll start by injecting just a little, after which the pain will grow, and grow, and grow some more. If you answer the questions I ask, I'll inject the rest and reward you with a quick death. If not…"

Chuck's heart stopped. He hadn't come this far just to have Cole die now.

He ignored the warning looks by Sarah and Casey as he scooted out from under the table, staying low. The woman heard Chuck's clothes catch on the carpet. She stopped advancing on Cole and spun around. "What was that?" she demanded.

Chuck reached up to put the box cutter in Casey's hands, blade pointed towards the rope. With the torturer's attention on him and Sarah, Casey couldn't afford to start working his bonds yet; he settled for finding the rope with the edge of the blade and biding his time.

Chuck reached into his shirt pocket and yanked out his gun and a particular piece of ammo. He took a glance over at Sarah, who was doing her best to ignore Chuck while the woman scanned the room. Her poker face shifted to shock as Chuck stood up.

So did the expression of the woman standing next to Cole, the syringe in her hand dangerously close to Cole. She started moving the tip towards Cole's neck.

"I don't think we'll be doing that," hesaid quietly, warningly.

"And why is that?" she responded, suddenly seeming unperturbed by Chuck's appearance. Seeing no reason to stop, she put the tip of the syringe on Cole's neck and grabbed the back of the collar to keep him still.

"You see this?" Chuck held up the nearly perfectly straight paper clip, the last inch of the end he showed to her coated in black.

She nodded.

He slipped the metal into his gun and took aim. "This has been treated with a little home brew of my own. Unlike yours, I happen to know _exactly_ what it will do." He loaded it into the gun and cocked it back, slowly sidestepping behind Sarah. "One scratch of this and you may not die a painful death, but be assured, it will be quick."

As his words sunk in, he slowly continued his sideways walk across the room, passing around the end of the table while keeping the weapon trained on the woman.

Her eyes narrowed. "You're lying."

"Try me. One scratch and you're done."

"If you were any kind of trained assassin, you wouldn't have a weapon made of binder clips and rubber bands."

"Sometimes we need to improvise."

"What, you brought toxins but you didn't bring a gun?"

"I'd be happy to pull the vial out of my pocket and show you, but I think you understand why I can't do that."

"Because you don't have one."

Chuck felt himself begin to sweat. The two were in a standoff, and all it would take was one scream to do them in. Her smile told him that she knew the truth.

He had two choices. The first was to surrender outright, in which case Fulcrum would have four prisoners, including the Intersect. The second was to bluff. He had bluffed once before, but never with somebody else's life.

There was a first time for everything.

"Go ahead." Chuck shrugged. "Stick the syringe in his neck, and then I'll have no reason not to take you down. One-for-one with two agents freed; that seems like an acceptable trade to me."

A hunched-over Cole turned his head, the wryness in his bright eyes standing out amidst the tanned skin, the dark stubble and the caked-on sweat and blood. Still, there was no denying the respect that Cole had for Chuck in that moment. Chuck's confidence grew.

The slightest trace of doubt crept into the woman's face. Licking her lips, she readjusted her grip on the syringe and Cole's collar with a determined expression.

Thwack!

Her eyes glazed over. She knees gave and she collapsed to the ground, the syringe rolling out of her hand and across the floor.

Behind her prone body stood Casey, holding her own discarded club, a satisfied look on his face.

After turning his head to see what had happened, Cole let out a grateful sigh. "Thank you. I've wanted to do that for half an hour now."

Chuck let his weapon drop with a relieved sigh. A sense of jubilation surged through his veins. It had worked! Somehow, in some way, he had figured out how to rescue his teammates ... with no help from another agent. With no help from the Intersect.

The slam of metal on wood jolted him from his internal celebration. Casey had slammed the box cutter onto the table, reminding him that their work wasn't done yet.

"Get them loose," Casey ordered Chuck as he walked over to the window. He parted the blinds to keep watch.

Chuck grabbed the box cutter and quickly went to work on the MI6 agent's bonds.

The man was slightly delirious with pain, and his eyes had heavy lids. "I didn't know you knew anything about poison," he said in a tired voice.

"I don't," Chuck said a bit sheepishly. "It's toner ink. However, if seven years of _MacGyver_ taught me anything, it's that there isn't a problem that can't be solved with a paper clip."

Cole shook his head. "You really should get a gun."

"Tell my partners that."

After the last of the bonds came free, Chuck left Cole gratefully rubbing at his chafed skin and rushed across the room to kneel down next to Sarah's chair so he could free her. She looked down at him with an expression that was only mostly blank; he couldn't understand what little seeped through her defenses.

"You shouldn't have come," she said quietly.

"I couldn't let my team down. I am part of the team, aren't I?"

Her feet freed, he headed around behind the chair to cut the rope around her wrists.

She stared into space as he freed his hands; the work was a bit slower to avoid any more cuts into her skin.

"You really did," she said, a small note of wonder coloring her voice.

"Did what?"

"You came for the team."

"That's right. Why does that matter?"

Her hands came free. She pivoted in the chair to look at him, her eyes full of meaning he couldn't grasp. She never got to answer the question.

"Carmichael," Casey barked. "Search Rosa Klebb and see if she has anything useful. Barker, check her kit to see if there's anything we can use to get out of here. Walker, gather up what's left of the rope and tie her up."

Once more, the mystery that was Sarah Walker would need to wait. There was work to do.

Chuck went across the room, not quite sure how to search the woman. Was he supposed to check her bra? Her panties? Run his hands under her clothes, across her skin?

Barker noticed his hesitance as he sorted through the case of torture implements. "Carmichael," he said quietly with a sidelong glance, "I tend to believe she lost her right to any modesty about ten shots to my ribs ago."

A bit of a flush came to Chuck's skin. "Fair point." Chuck knelt down and treated her, as much as he could, like a CPR dummy. The flush only increased when he was forced to finish the search with Sarah in close proximity. As she bound the woman's hands tightly behind her back, Chuck was rewarded with a series of awkward moments, more than one amused smirk from Sarah, but most importantly, a small pistol from a holster strapped to her thigh under her black skirt.

Sarah finished binding the woman and shoved her under the back of the table. The three gathered to see what weapons they had found. There wasn't much of use. Aside from the pistol, the club, and the box cutter, everything else that they had was pretty much useless for an attack or an escape.

Casey let out a long sigh before scanning the room a last time. "Bartowski, you just wearing that fanny pack as a fashion statement, or did you actually bring anything besides a sling shot and a bad poker face?"

Chuck had forgotten the pack, and was torn between embarrassment and indignation. After the incident on the floor, he deliberately chose the latter. He was about done with being embarrassed; after all, he had gotten them all free. "Actually..." he said suggestively as he pulled off the pack.

He started pulling items from the pack and carefully setting them on the table so as not to make much noise.

Silence filled the room as the team surveyed the items added to their inventory. Cole and Sarah's faces conveyed what Casey had no reservations about saying.

"You're kidding me, right?"


End file.
